
Class : 1^^ 
Book V ; ' 



COPYRIGHT DKPOSm 



/ 



HISTORY /^^ 

OF THE 

DECLENSION OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC 



Un^ited States, 



EVIDENCE OF ITS IMPENDING FALL. 



By H. H. MUNN 



i 



i^u'D, 



CLEVELAND, O. : 

FAIKBANKS, BENEDICT & CO., PRINTERS, HERALD OFFICE 
1875. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

H. H. MUNN, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
All rights reserved. 






NOTE. 

Many will notice that there are several translated M'orks from 
which facts have been tiuoted where the names of the translators 
are omitted. It is desirable to state that such errors were made in 
copying from the original draft. Those works to which reference is 
made are authorized standard translations. Where the size of book 
in the notes is not mentioned. 8vo. et infra are to be understood. 



VOLUME I. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEK I. 

Preliminary Remarks— Advance of Science— Backwardness of 
History compared to Advancement of the Sciences— Present 
and Past Condition of European Civilization— Of the Fac- 
ulties of the Mmd 17—35 



CHAPTER II. 

Brief Allusions to the Organization of Mankind into Political 
Bodies— Reflections upon an Earlier Age, and the Purity 
of Man in a Primitive State 36—46 



CHAPTER III. 

The System of Education in the United States one of the Causes 
of the Moral Degeneracy of its People— Its Defective 
Nature having Extinguished the most flovu-ishing Govern- 
ments of Modern Antiquity— Evidence of its Demoralizing 
Tendency from Grecian and Carthaginian States— Intel- 
lectual and Moral Qualities of the Lower Classes of the 



VIII CONTENTS. 

Carthaginians, compared with the same of the Lower 
Classes of the Greeks— Rise and Tendency of Philosophy — 
Its gi'eat effect upon the Intellectual powers— Comparison 
of the Moral and the Intellectual Condition of the Educated 
with the Uneducated Greeks — The Great Depravity of the 
former and compai-ative Moral Supremacy of the latter — 
The Rapid Development of the Propensities under influence 
of Greek Education, and consequent Extinction of Hel- 
lenic Freedom and Independence— Education too limited, 
not too extended — Being limited to the Intellectual, to the 
Religious and to the Animal — It becomes, indirectly, one 
of the Main Causes of the Disappearance of Virtue from 
the majority of the People of "The Great Republic" — 
Republican Governments dependent on Moral Principles — 
The method of Restoration and Preservation of the latter 
disclosed 47—187 



CHAPTEE IV. 

Brief Reflections on the Culture of the Primitive Faculties of 
the Mind — Assumptions of Theologians regarding the Ten- 
dencies of Religion to enhance the Moral Qualities of 
Mankind — Effect of those Assumptions indirectly Contrib- 
utory to the Reign of the Propensities, and to the Dimin- 
ishment of the Moral Sentiments, in the United States of 
America — More Pertinacity exhibited by Moderns on this 
question than by Ancients — Evidence of this Error shown 
by Religious and Moral Qualities of the Carthaginians — 
Necessities of direct, separate and systematic Culture of 
the Moral Sentiments to Prevent the Nation's Fall 188 — 260 



CONTENTS. IX 



CHAPTER V. 



Error of the Christian Clergy proved from the history of Jewish 
mmd from the birth of Abraham to the Egyptian Bond- 
age—From the Exodus to then- Dispersion— General Reflec- 
tions in Retrospect— The Christian Religion not Defective, 
but Misapplied- Acts of the Christian Churches in Amer- 
ica—The Moral Degeneracy of their Communicants- 
Increase of Depravity with the Increase of Religion, the 
latter indirectly, though not du-ectly, the cause— Christianity 
adapted to the Development of the Religious, but not to 
the Development of the Moral, Feelings— Dkect Culture of 
the Moral Sentiments bemg omitted in the United States, 
partially through the influence of the Clergy, one of the 
causes of the disappearance of Virtue in the People— 
The Religious and the Moral Feelings, being positive insti- 
tutions of Nature, of different primitive qualities, require 
positive but different kinds of Culture— Penalties for neglect 
of either 261—375 



CHAPTER VI. 

Significance of the Mental Faculties drawn from their Organic 
Qualities— Their Primitive State— Causes of Degeneracy- 
Course of Degeneracy — Moral Condition of Carthage, of 
Greece, of Rome and of western Asia— Demoralization of 
Rome inherited, through modern European nations, by 
settlers of North America— Enquiry into the Depravity of 
Man, to ascertain if that Depravity be not a Derangement 
of the Moral Powers— Causes which tended to Restore the 



CONTENTS. 

Moral Sentiments in the inhabitants of Great Britain — 
Improved Condition witli Defects transmitted to Pioneers 
of the Thirteen Colonies — The present Degeneracy consid- 
ered a relapse into that Derangement which attended our 
Remote Ancestors in the Middle Ages — Necessity of so 
treating the Mind to effect for it, in the United States, a 
healthy tone of action, by which the Equitable Features of 
the Republic may be rendered Endm-ing Establishments 376 — 426 



CHAPTER VII. 

No Declension without a status exists from which a Nation can 
decline — Partial recover}^ to a primitive state by Settlers of 
North America — Causes which contributed to produce that 
recovery — Evidences of that partial Restoration in the 
People of the Thirteen Colonies at the period of the Amer- 
ican Revolution — Change of Character in their immediate 
Successors— Contrast of the latter to the former — Attitude 
of the Southern Slave States on the question of Slavery — 
Decline of the Moral Sentiments in the South — Opmions 
and Feelings of Southern Slaveholders enter the North and 
stifle the Expressions of Humanity— Decline of the Moral 
Sentiments in the North 437—531 



PREFATORY REMARKS. 



In submitting the title of the following pages to the 
public, the author is aware that it is liable to encounter the 
settled prejudices of a certain portion of the people. He 
well understands that the past history of the republic, and 
the anticipated glory of its rising greatness, are dear to the 
feelings of every true American. Its institutions, the noblest 
and farthest advanced in civilization of any ever in exist- 
ence, have closely interwoven themselves with the sympathies 
of every person who has a home in this particular portion 
of the New World. 

But why should such prejudice exist against a work 
written expressly to prevent a final catastrophe ? Why should 
patriots close their eyes to the fact, and deign not to examine 
a question of such momentous significance ? Does it tend 
to precipitate a downfall.? Would the declaration that an 
individual must perish unless the disease with which he is 
afflicted be neutralized, be detrimental to the patient.? Is 
it not directly opposed to a premature ending, and some- 
what adapted to render life more probable.? Shall we be 



XII PREFATORY REMARKS. 

oblivious of truth that we be not pained by the contempla- 
tion of error? It is no evidence of wisdom, it is no proof 
of attachment to refuse to investigate the nature of those 
unnatural conditions which tend to remove a beloved object. 
Our pride of self should not be more sensitive than that of 
virtue. We should not be so callous to the one as to become 
insensible to the other. Shall the fearless indifference of the 
Stoic, shall the negative asperities of the Cynic, lightly and 
summarily dispose of the welfare of a great people .'' Shall 
the question be ignored, be postponed till evils are remedi- 
less } Shall these trivial considerations blindly permit us to 
pass over curable difficulties until their immensity impels a 
Livy to direct our attention to the "structure of" our 
"ancient morals," (viewing its decline) "at first, as it were, 
leaning aside, then sinking farther and farther, then begin- 
ning to fall precipitate until he arrives at the present times, 
when our vices have attained to such a hight of enormity 
that we can no longer endure either the burden of them or 
the sharpness of the necessary remedies." Is this the wis- 
dom that ought to be exhibited by the posterity of those 
few revolutionary colonists, who converted one-half of the 
globe into republics, and for a time seriously threatened to 
reverse the political map of Europe? A passive insensibil- 
ity under contemptous feelings is accessory to the evil, and 
contributory to our overthrow. Late may become too late, 
that which is curable become incurable. 

But very few can trace their lineage 'farther back into 
the earlier days of the republic, or have their feelings and 



PKEFATOKY REMAEKS, XIII 

interests more identified with its past history and its future 
prospects than the author. His interest and happiness, as 
much as those of any other, depend upon its prosperity, his 
sorrow and mortification upon its fall. It was, therefore, 
not for the creation of capital, pecuniary nor political, it 
was no feeling of malevolence, no evil desire that prompted 
the author to point out the dangers which threaten the 
freedom of the land, and indicate the nature of those for- 
eign elements which are rapidly decomposing the most vital 
principles of the republic. Individuals whose characters 
remain untarnished by the corruptions of the present gene- 
rations, cannot be indifferent to the fate of the ship of state 
when it is in danger of becoming a wreck from the fury of 
the elements. 

Those chapters which relate to the Carthaginian, to the 
Hebrew, and to the Grecian histories, were written to expose 
the errors of our present system of education, as the same, 
though more limited, attended those remarkable powers 
during their infancy, maturity and decline. The author felt 
that the subjects discussed in them could not be omitted so 
long as their tendency contributes to remove the republican 
qualities from the masses of the nation. To suggest this, 
and hint at an application more properly adapted to their 
limited scope, limited, as at present it is, to the religious 
and to the intellectual life, as will appear from perusal, was 
one of the immediate, although subordinate, objects of that 
portion of the work. 

Whether this attempt to control and direct our national 



XIV PREFATORY REMARKS. 

life by additional culture, as unfolded in the general intro- 
duction, be successful or not, it depends, in my opinion, on 
the action or the inaction of the people. But whichever this 
may be, it is certain that we cannot continue to progress 
very long in that direction which has hitherto marked our 
national career. It is well known to all educated minds 
that the constitutions of governments must be molded into 
conformity to the moral condition of the people. And what 
is that moral condition in the United States } Can any one 
say that it is very flattering.? Every individual, who, by 
nature and acquirement, is enabled to comprehend the 
principles of civil government as applicable to the mental 
powers, is no less astonished than saddened at the great 
amount of corruption which is continually springing up 
around him. And sadder yet it is when to this thought is 
coupled the fact that if there should be a complete change 
in the people there must follow one in the civil government. 
Although a strong centralized government may be better 
adapted to control the vile, it is not necessary to influence 
the actions of the just, nor desirable with them. 

The fall of the republic is one of the most grevious mis- 
fortunes which an American can possibly anticipate. Unlike 
the huge and overgrown monarchies, which were erected by 
the brutal qualities of man in the earlier ages of the world 
against the interests of the people, it stands to-day without 
having had a peer in the institutional features of its organ- 
ization, the most gentle, the most just and the most enlight- 
ened. Should it continue another century, it is altogether 



PREFATORY REMARKS. XV 

probable that no despotism will remain in Europe. If it 
fall, if fall it must, in important epochs, the event Avill be 
only second to the general judgment of mankind. It 
belongs to you, Americans, to say if the principles of equity 
shall cease, and the world be remanded back into those bar- 
barous relations which beclouded the white races in the 
middle ages. 

If the following pages make some contribution, however 
small, to check the progress of evil by directing the attention 
of our people to the subject of decline and the necessity 
of reformatory measures, the author will feel rewarded for 
the labor he has bestowed upon them. 

East Rockport, Ohio, October 6, 1875. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Preliminary Remarks— Advance of Science — Backwardness of History 
compared to Advancement of the Sciences — Present and Past 
Condition of European Civilization — Of the Faculties of the Mind. 

The uses to wliich history can be applied, depend 
upon the treatment of the subject and the capacity 
of the reader. A connected narration of the events 
of nations merely, may amuse the feelings of such 
readers as are unaccustomed to reflect upon the great 
laws which govern society, but can force them to 
make little advancement^ except in a limited intel- 
lectual view, upon those regretful conditions which 
existed in the past. The students of history, with 
very few exceptions, have studied only those branches 
of the subject which fall within the knowledge of 
the external senses. Their ultimate object has been 
to treat of the wars between independent states, of 
the overthrow of nations, or of the fall of dynasties. 
But as little preparation to intelligently understand 
the tendencies of the human mind and the influences 

2 



18 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

to which it is subjected by external objects, has been 
made by historians, their productions partake of the 
same character, carrying the reader no farther than to 
a detail of such facts as tend to enlarge his learning, 
by generating in him a memory of particulars, to 
inflame his passions, to produce feelings of joy or of 
sorrow, of indignation or to impress discouragement 
on him at the depravity which man has continued to 
exhibit through an unbroken series of ages, teaching 
him the vanity of struggling for those things which 
are sure to be soon swept away by the rude nature 
of conquerors, or by the storms of revolution. 

All branches of physics have been reduced to 
science, and progress has been made in them, which, 
had even such attempts been put forward three 
centuries ago, would have been overcome by the 
fanatic incredulity of mankind. Those phenomena of 
nature which were once considered inexplicable, are 
now fully explained and understood, and those who 
sought to understand them by their investigation, as 
guilty of great rashness, impiety and folly, are now at 
least exempted from political persecution. Nor have 
spirits of scientific tendency been satisfied with knowl- 
edge thus acquired. The curiosity of the world has 
explored the sepulcher of the prince and the peasant 
of remote times and countries in pursuit of informa- 
tion, resulting in partial restoration of languages 



GENERAL INTRODTJOTION. 19 

long since lost to human memory, and cities which, 
during their thriftiest growth, freighted with living 
inhabitants, by convulsions of nature, like man him- 
self, had gone to their graves without monuments 
to mark the site of their burial, have been disen- 
tombed to satisfy this curiosity of man in the present 
of the condition of man in the past. And while 
the laws of life, those of birth, growth, sickness 
and death are studied from a scientific base with 
something like becoming accuracy, and the days of 
man thereby prolonged ; while the elements of nature, 
by knowledge of their laws, have been subjected and 
applied to the ease, comfort and convenience of man, 
little progress has been made in the study and 
application of history to subserve and promote, in 
like manner, the interests of the race. Diseases of 
which man formerly sickened and died are now 
rendered harmless by application of therapeutics; 
and by an understanding of those laws which control 
organic life applied to ossifrage and other injuries to 
the person, which injuries once, by the backwardness 
of science, would have been considered as fatal, are 
now regarded as of trivial moment. Most everything 
which falls within range of the intellectual faculties 
of the mind, but history itself, has been reduced to, 
or is approaching, a condition that is in conformity 
to a scientific mold. 



20 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

In very few instances, and most recently at that, 
some works of extraordinary merit have appeared, 
contributing very much to bring history forward in 
one or two particulars to that standard of knowl- 
edge which, in other branches the white and Semitic 
races have been enabled to reach. What avail is it 
to mortal to read a long detail of events made up 
of the momentary happiness or lasting calamity of 
nations? What lessons of wisdom do we derive by 
learning, for example, that the republic of Rome 
ceased to be when Csesar triumphed over Pompey in 
the civil war, and that the republican rights of the 
masses were sacrificed by the selfishness of the suc- 
cessful competitor, unless we understand the causes 
which for several generations had been gradually pro- 
ducing the result, and making the conquest of freedom 
by absolutism possible? The student learns what 
followed the civil war and some facts relating to it 
which preceded it ; that many of the patrician families 
were false to the state and to each other ; that there 
was a general corruption among the people, a deteri- 
oration from the founders of the city and the 
conquerors of the world; but farther than this no 
inquiry is made. Thus he stops with a knowledge of 
those facts which fall within range of the external 
senses. But those causes which corrupted the masses 
of the nation and thrust the nobler sentiments in 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 21 

snbordination to the viler passions, and thereby made 
the career of Caesar more than a possible necessity, 
are never studied and mentally digested. So that 
should the same combination of evil causes be in 
active life in any contemporary nation, its inhabitants, 
even its learned, its professionals, politicians and 
statesmen would not perceive their quiet but pro- 
ductive operations till, by the striking similarity of 
new troubles to old characters and events, they 
should, after the loss of their freedom, in the exu- 
berancy of surprise, discover that for a long time 
nine-tenths of their countrymen had been afflicted 
with those moral disorders which, in diverse coun- 
tries and ages, produced their fruits in giving birth 
to the treachery of Napoleon and the treason of 
Csesar. 

Should the causes which degenerated the republics 
and constitutional governments of antiquity be known 
to mankind as plainly as the events which mark 
their beginnings and their ends, those causes, under 
a healthy regimen of public thought, might be some- 
what directed, partially diverted, or totally avoided. 
But we are met at the very threshold of the question 
with the voluntary statement that they can never be 
known with sufficient certainty to warrant general 
adoption and action. It is the least considerable 
feature of this objection that it savors strongly of 



22 HISTOET OF THE DEOLKPTSION- 

that stupidity, superstition and ignorance which 
obstructed the progress of knowledge, and dissemi- 
nated darkness throughout Europe during the Middle 
Ages. There was a time, no doubt, when this alle- 
gation might have been held with some approach to 
truth ; but since many of the questions of inquiry, 
to which was once presented more of a forbidding, 
more of a formidable opposition from the superstition 
of mankind, have been thoroughly systematized, and 
thereby erected into sciences, the philosophic histo- 
rian has but to become acquainted with these that 
he may know, by their proper application to any 
given nation, the progress it is making toward a 
healthy maturity or a sickly existence, and, of course, 
an early decay. It is, therefore, by an understanding 
of political economy, mental philosophy, physics, 
statistics, laws of life, climatic influences and the 
causes of the degeneracy of nations, that furnishes 
the key to unlock to the student the decline or 
progress that any nation of mankind has been forced 
or enabled to make. 

If it be true that Europe has been advancing in 
civilization for the last three centuries, it can be only 
claimed as an intellectual one. If man now be 
apparently less harsh in the exhibition of his feelings 
than formerly, it is to be attributed mainly to his 
greater vanity and education. It is in consequence 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 23 

of having been clianged by several causes, not 
essentially in nature but in manner, from the coarse 
cruelties of the Middle Ages to the refined barbar- 
isms of the more modern times. Man, since the 
beginning of the Reformation, has advanced, it is 
true, but partially so only. The reasoning powers 
of his mind have increased in strength and made 
positive progress in the knowledge of those laws by 
which organic life and external objects are controlled. 
But while this part of mental life has thus pro- 
gressed, a part, also, has remained in that condition 
in which it existed during the unbroken reign of the 
Papacy. Education has changed man in expression, 
has given him more of a smooth exterior, but 
on the whole, he has made no very considerable 
advancement in ridding himself of those barbarous 
feelings of which, eighteen centuries ago, we find him 
to have been composed. Although this backward- 
ness of the moral nature of man cannot be directly 
attributed to defective historic methods, this moral 
portion would, nevertheless, have come forward vrith 
his intellectual, had history been made to improve 
as science advanced. 

As everything treated of by man, of an historical 
nature, has fallen under the head of effects than 
the causes of efiects, the natural order of things on 
this subject has been reversed. Hence the great 



24 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSIOIS'. 

degeneracy, as we shall hereafter discover, which man 
has suffered in different ages, should no more excite 
our pity for his calamities than our surprise at his 
stupidity. Had his attention been directed to those 
causes which produce ethical qualities, he had been 
somewhat fortified, and I may say, in proportion to 
his industry, possessed of the power to shapen their 
tendency, to direct the whole mind, and to control 
the national as well as the individual life. The 
neglect of these truths has, I venture to assert, 
overthrown his liberty and deprived him of that 
happiness which a permanent prosperity is sure to 
produce. 

Republicanism springs from those moral elements 
which desire justice and carry it into individual acts, 
acts by which all are equally privileged before the 
law, in which all are equally taxed to support the 
government. When these primitive elements in the 
majority are diminished in quantity, justice ceases 
to characterize the acts of that majority, under the 
well known law that effects bear a due proportion 
to their causes. If this has long been the case, even 
for a quarter of a century, in an age like the pres- 
ent, when everything tends to rapid development in 
strange and startling combinations, with any govern- 
ment of mankind, it is greatly declining in power, 



GENEEAL INTRODUCTION. 25 

is careering to its fall, notwithstanding it may 
present such deceptive appearances as extension of 
territory, growth in wealth and great acquisition of 
military glory. Greece, Carthage and Rome, the 
most renowned republics of antiquity, exhibited as 
great heroism, self-sacrifice and military sagacity as 
historians have of other nations recorded, the first in 
the Peloponnesian, the two last in the Second Punic 
war. Yet the first, upon the close of the struggle, 
surrendered its liberty and became a slave; the sec- 
ond, accepting the fire and the sword of the Roman 
soldier, ceased to be. The last, very soon after the 
close of a war which gave her universal domination, 
was transformed into a despotism, and the Eternal 
City, instead of continuing the abode of contentment 
and might, became the receptacle of every species of 
vice and crime and hence not only the happiness 
but the comfort of the people also was expunged. 
By the conquest of Carthage, (which, although mainly 
accomplished in the Second, was not completed till 
the Third, Punic war,) she was raised to universal 
supremacy ; her independency was secure, and none 
could hopefully offer successful opposition to her 
aggressive claims. But in this, as in many other 
instances before and since, it was equally a descent 
of the conqueror as well as the conquered to a con- 
dition of moral wretchedness which must have placed 



26 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSIOJST. 

the contemporary moralist in utter despair. Although 
she had conquered the world and placed her inde- 
pendency beyond question, she had lost her freedom. 
Although EiOme had achieved a formal triumph over 
the political states of Asia and Africa, their vices had 
subjected almost every portion of her people, in the 
very heart of the republic. Her domination over them 
was nominal, while theirs over her was real. While 
they left her the honor or odium of claiming uni- 
versal dominion, they enjoyed it. Although the 
formal independency of Grecia, Asia and Africa had 
been extinguished, Rome had been subdued bj^ the 
vices of the South and the East. 

The imperial, which succeeded the republican, form 
of government in Rome, seemed to be more of votary 
to the vices of the eastern world than an originator of 
them. Public crimes and private vices, being prac- 
tised in the upper, rapidly spread to the lower, 
classes, through that imitative genius which the 
human mind has never failed to exhibit in all 
climes and countries. The three universal mon- 
archies, which had ruled over Asia, had effectually 
expunged all ethical principles from the people ; and 
Rome under the Csesars was enabled, by similar 
methods, to produce the same results of moral 
sterility in the inhabitants of Europe. As the 
primitive faculties of the mind are innate, those 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 27 

cultured into active life gave character to the peo- 
ple, and for several generations before the fall of 
the republic and the empire, robbery, theft, adultery, 
treason and murder were the barbarous character- 
istics which bore rule over all tribes and nations. 
As far as the effects to the corrupt are concerned, 
we may feel almost a total indifference to the calam- 
ities which their corrupt course of life may have 
produced upon them, yet when we come to consider 
that vice and virtue are alike descendable from 
generation to generation, from age to age ; that also 
we inherited the tendencies which the Roman people 
had to vices, more fully than did Rome those of Asia 
and Africa, it may be made as much a matter of 
concernment to know what we received as whence 
we came. 

Human progress has been about the same at all 
periods; political and pecuniary prosperity preced- 
ing and accompanying a moral decline ; and most 
nations, which have fallen, have been overthrown 
at or almost immediately after the most prodigious 
exhibition of their powers. This ought to teach us 
that national is as frail and uncertain as human life. 
It teaches us the sad lesson that to-day we may have 
the most buoyant hopes and joyous feelings at the 
glory to which our nation has arrived, but to-morrow, 
comparatively, be called to shed our tears and offer our 



28 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

prayers in vain over her mortal remains. It warns ns 
that the vast edifices, the numerous temples of liberty 
which have been planted by the people of "The Great 
Republic," in the various portions of the land, 
may, long before another century shall have been 
added to the age of the Christian era, be dismantled 
by the ambitious, by the profane, and the material 
of which they are composed be enrobed in the moss 
of decay and moldering into dust. 

We are usually deceived by those indices of exter- 
nal conditions, which pertain more to apparent than 
to real prosperity, such as multiplication in people, 
in wealth and in territory; whereas it is known to 
all mankind that riches tends to corrupt its recip- 
ients ; that very extended dominions more completely 
drain the treasury, in erecting fortifications, building 
harbors, railways and otherwise developing the 
resources of the country; and that in cases of 
insurrection or invasion complicate the action of 
government in their defense ; and again, as the inhab- 
itants become corrupt their greater number becomes 
more of a standing menace to the symbols of repub- 
lican life, by giving rise and activity to dissenting 
factions, than protectors of its form. The mind in 
practical life, being so constantly called to contem- 
plate effects, seldom dwells upon causes, and hence 
views only the apparent and not the reaL It is 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 29 

I say, these deceptive appearances which have 
misled man in his estimates of political prosperity 
in republics. When we behold the acute ingenuity 
of mankind culminating in astounding discoveries 
and inventions, we are very apt to conclude that we 
are in a state of progression. This, so far as intel- 
lectuality is concerned, may be correct; in it there 
may be progression, but it should not be forgotten 
that republican and constitutional governments do 
not arise from the intellectual but from the moral 
primitive elements of the mind. 

As most of the American people are eminently 
skeptical, their minds reject tolerably well ascer 
tained facts and events, adopting instead thereof the 
theoretical views of speculative thought. To an 
unbounded hope is joined a courage almost as 
unlimited, silencing those warnings of caution, which 
are produced by the legitimate and natural language 
of surrounding circumstances. From such condition 
of mental organization is generated a recklessness that 
enables individuals to defy the worst possible phases 
of co-ordinate evils, giving those individuals capacity 
to slumber in peace and quiet on the brink of nascent 
revolutions. Hence, national calamities presented to 
their understanding meet a critical antagonism that 
is strongly tinctured with the vindictiveness and 
scurrility of Warburtonianism. As doubt on general 



30 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

questions is a fundamental cliaracteristic, a tendency 
ensues that is predisposed to dispute the truths of 
things which, to a mind of circumspection, appears 
evident to the senses. Hence, American mind dis- 
putes all questions and forces proof. Whoever, 
therefore, desires to call public attention to impend- 
ing national troubles, if he wish to effect a reform 
to avert calamities, is necessarily compelled to bring 
forward rigid evidence to support his declaration. 
Of tliis we do not complain, but it may answer as 
explanation to the inquiry why the following pages 
were brought into existence. 

It is not our design to enter upon an elaborate 
discussion of mental philosophy, but to such extent 
only as we think should be devoted to it by the 
requirements of the case, and the space limited to 
ourselves in the treatment of the subject. We shall 
use, whenever occasion requires, the nomenclature of 
the Gallian philosophy, as it does, in our opinion, 
correspond better with the primitive faculties of the 
mind than any other with which we are acquainted. ■• 



I In this view we feel supported by Auguste Comte, one of the ablest 
thinliers of modern times. In his great worli he says: "Among the 
innumerable objections which have been aimed at this fine doctrine, 
considered as a whole, the only one which merits discussion here is tlie 
supposed necessity of human actions. * * * Gall has fully and clearly 
exposed the powerlessness of metaiihysical methods for the study of 
1; tcUectual and moral phenomena; and in the present state of the human 
mind, all dlsousslon on this subject is superfluous. The great philosophical 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 31 

The reflections of the following pages, in so far as 
those pages relate to the united or to the independ- 
ent action of the faculties, are based upon it as 
it was left when it came from the hands of Dr. 
Spurzheim, in an improved condition. 

There are conditions of individual objects which 
are called by philosophers the secondary qualities of 
matter. These, for the benefit of the general reader, 
may be known as configuration, quantity, color and 
impenetrability. The secondary qualities of matter 
are not immediately cognizant to the thinking powers 
of the mind. They are taken into the mind and 
there impressed that instant the eyes rest upon them. 
It is empirical with every individual that at a glance 
of the eye he has an immediate impression of the 
size, color, form and resistance of any given external 
object. The impression is as instantaneous as the 
action of light, to the rapidity of which it appears 
to be in just proportion. The mental faculties which 
take cognizance of the secondary qualities of matter, 
whatever they may be, when acted upon by external 
objects, are in a condition of passive receptivity. 
The images impressed upon these faculties by objects 



cause is tried and judged; and the metaphysicians have passed from a state 
of domination to one of protestation, in the learned world at least, where 
their opposition would obtain no attention but for the inconvenience of 
their still impeding the progress of popular reason."— fosirrvE Philosophy, 
330 and 383, 



32 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of the external world are not immediately presented 
to the reasoning faculties, although the inceptive 
action of the latter and the final of the former appear 
to be simultaneous. 

The faculties of reason require time for their oper- 
ation, while the perceptives do not. ^ With the latter, 
the effects produced upon them by external objects 
occur in time, or otherwise those faculties could have 
no existence ; but they do not require a prolonga- 
tion of time to receive impressions from without. 
Everything in the organic world is dynamical in its 
primitive nature, requiring time for composition or 
decomposition, extension or contraction, the faculties 
and organs of which it is possessed being subjected 
to the same general law. 

Reason and perception frequently occur so as to 
mislead the mind into the supposition that they are 
compound operations derivable from a single source 
or faculty. But the former succeeds the latter, that 
is, those faculties which, by their action give rise to 
reason, direct their operations upon the impressions 
produced upon the perceptions from without. There- 
fore, the former cannot begin before the latter has ter- 
minated. If reason require time and perception do 



2 The faculties whose peculiar province is to take cognizance of the 
aeoondary qualities ot external objects are termed by phrenologists percep- 
tive faculties. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 33 

not, they cannot be derivable from the same faculty- 
exercising different functions. If, also, the reasoning 
faculties are not, in the first instance, cognizant of 
the secondary qualities of matter, they have no direct 
relative knowledge of the external world. They 
receive their knowledge secondarily, and, therefore, 
their knowledge is not direcly relative, being fur- 
nished with the data by the operations of other 
primitive powers. 

The perceptions cannot be identical with instinct, 
for the latter is a feeling which has terminated its 
actions, while the former are effects produced upon 
faculties which are destitute of emotions. 

Judgment is the determinate action of those 
faculties whose peculiar province is to reason ; and 
are called by the disciples of Gall, Causality and 
Comparison. 

The Consciousness of Sir William Hamilton is not 
cognizant of the secondary qualities of matter. It 
has no knowledge of things from the external world, 
and depends not on its own action. Consciousness is 
the condition of one faculty after the action of that one 
faculty, — the impression produced upon that faculty 
by its own operation, and does not have existence till 
after that operation. It is not a primitive faculty. 

Man is possessed of fundamental moral faculties, 
which, to me, occur as best represented by the names 

8 



34 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of Conscientiousness and Benevolence. ^ These moral 
powers are among the most important faculties of the 
mind, and in the past, have either been overlooked or 
entirely misunderstood. * They are designed to render 
one individual just in all his relations with another, 
and give him feelings of compassion at the misfor- 
tunes of others. They suppress fraud, cruelty and 
oppression. These faculties are feelings. 

He has fundamental religious faculties, which may 
be known by the terms Marvelousness and Venera- 
tion. These appear to be designed to render man 
credulous in the works of Providence, and reverential 
toward His laws and the attributes of His being. 

Man is also possessed, to a high degree, of funda- 
mental faculties, which endear him to his family and 



3 It is to be understood that no reference is here made to anatomy. 

4. As to the comparative superiority of Dr. Gall's method over the 
psychological, Auguste Comte remarks : ** As to tire doctrine," psychology, 
"the first glance shows a radical fault in it, common to all sects, — a false 
eBtimntft of the general relations between the affective and the intellectual 
faculties. However various may be the theories about the preponderance 
of the latter, all metaphysicians assert that preponderance by making these 
faculties their starting point. The Intellect is almost exclusively the subject 
of their speculations, and the affections have been almost entirely neglected; 
and, moreover, always subordinated to the understanding. Now such a 
conception represents precisely the reverse of the reality ; not only for 
animals, but for man also; for daily experience shows that the affections, 
the propensities, the passions, are the great springs of human life and 
that, so far from resulting from intelligence, their spontaneous and inde- 
pendent impulse is indispensable to the first awakening and continuous 
development of the various Intellectual faculties, by assigning to them a 
permanent end, without which— to say nothing of the vagueness of their 
general direction— they remain dormant in the majority of men."— Positive 
PhUjOSOphy, 384. 



GEiraRAL INTRODUCTION. 35 

all those friendsliips formed in the social circle or 
aronnd the hearthstones of his fireside. 

There are primitive selfish sentiments or faculties. 

There are also primitive mental powers which exer- 
cise the functions of reason, constitute "that god- 
like intellect" about which we have heard too much ; 
no more "god-like" than any of the instruments of 
the affective faculties. They constitute the instru- 
mentality by which the moral, the religious, the 
domestic, the selfish and the animal primitive powers 
of the mind accomplish their ends. 

He has, as has been implied, in common with other 
portions of the animal creation, primitive animal 
faculties or propensities. They are designed to render 
man executive, or destructive, as the occasion may 
require ; bold, acquisitive, secretive, efficient, enter- 
prising and industrious. Man has all the faculties 
of which the animals below him are possessed, and 
many more which they have not. 



CHAPTER II. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION". 



Brief Allusions to the Organization of Mankind into Political Bodies — 
Reflections upon an Earlier Age, and the Purity of Man in a 
Prunitive State. 

Little is positively known as to the exact period 
of time when government first had its beginning, or 
the precise locality of its origin. Althongh we have 
the history of the Hebrews, it does not furnish 
satisfactory evidence regarding the condition of gov- 
ernments, or of the organization of mankind into 
political corporations, preceding the birth of Abra- 
ham. But from 2000 B. C. to that epoch their 
history makes known to us, by the relation of their 
own events, something of the constitutional nature 
of surrounding states then in existence. The Egypt- 
ian monarchy was, at the birth of Abraham, a 
highly civilized power, and in the zenith of its 
glory. "The very first among the descendants of 
Noah whose individuality and personality is clear 
to us — the very first whose doings can be brought 

(36) 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 37 

into relation with events otherwise known or recog- 
nizable in the history of man — is introduced in a 
manner which reveals the fact that different races of 
the human family had then already been long estab- 
lished and widely spread. The memorable and 
mysterious journey which brought Terah into Haran 
on his way to Canaan, was a journey beginning 
in that ancient home, Ur, already known as 'of 
the Chaldees.' And when his son Abraham appears 
upon the scene, we find ourselves already in the 
presence of the monarchy of Egypt, and of the 
advanced civilization of the Pharaohs." And again, 
"the most moderate computation, however, carries 
the foundation of that monarchy as far back as 
seven hundred years before the visit of the Hebrew 
patriarch."^ Before the birth of Abraham's imme- 
diate progenitor there is no recorded history that is 
at all credible. Yet this pristine history of the 
Hebrews acquaints us with governments which had 
reached a high state of civilization. Beyond this 
history of the Israelites all that we know or can 
know must come from the reasonable conjectures of 
mankind, as the sciences of geology and archaeology 



I Primeval Man, by Duke of Argyll, page 83; see also the opinion of 
Josephus on the length of time which elapsed from the building of Memphis 
by Menes, king of Egj^jt, to the beginning of the reign of king Solomon, 
making a period of twenty-three hundred years before Christ. Also the 
history of Abraham in Genesis.— Antiquities, liber 8, sect. 2. chap. 1. 



38 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

furnish little aid, in consequence of the contradictory- 
nature of their primitive state. 

Before man was subjected to monarchial power, 
before he had been organized into any form of 
government such as is related by the Jewish patri- 
arch, Moses, he lived in some manner not wholly 
known to us. Governments arise from necessity, 
are forced into existence in consequence of a corrupt 
state of morals. This period in which man existed 
before governmental organization is generally known 
to mankind as the primitive age. In this age it 
is generally believed that a pure despotism gov- 
erned mankind. That the sex, the individual, 
possessing the greatest physical strength, controlled 
the actions of the other. It, however, is altogether 
probable that no despotism existed at all. That 
doubtless, was the manner by which warriors after- 
wards became great chieftains, and subjected their 
fellow-men to a subordinate condition. We believe it 
is nowhere contended that man was as venal, and 
if he were less corrupt, he was the more moral. 

Man in these early days lived under the influence 
of the natural action of the fundamental faculties of 
the mind ; and as his moral, religious and domestic 
feelings were in about equal proportion^ and perfect 
in the production of legitimate moi-al principles, 
there is reason to believe that he was just. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 39 

It has been supposed, and very correctly, too, that 
man is the happiest when in the enjoyment of the 
greatest number of his mental faculties ; that is, when 
all are in the discharge of their legitimate functions. 
Before they had been perverted, before an undue 
stimulus of a portion over those of others, and before 
those overstimulated faculties had been reduced to a 
condition of debauchery by long-continued perverted 
action, he was in the full possession of every portion 
of his being. 

In this primitive condition, man was not subject to 
those abnormal relations in the external world which 
produced their results in subsequent times, and now 
mark his character. With him no gorgeous liveries 
were flaunted in the eyes of mankind while their 
owners were in a condition of financial bankruptcy. 
He lived in no showy and extravagant palace, beyond 
the capacity of his means, but according to the require- 
ments of his needs. He was no member of a popular 
church, professing a belief in Divine revelation and the 
accountabilities therein contained, while he privately 
endorsed the development theories of a pantheist. He 
had not the income of thousands, which he uselessly 
expended on imposing church establishments, while 
the poor were starving for want within the precincts of 
his residence. He did not subsidize the corrupt for 
political preferment. He pandered not to institutions 



40 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of vice, nor to the lust of avarice, for the purpose of 
establishing a constituency, when it contributed to 
undermine the liberties of his country and to effect the 
enslavement of his race. He did not appropriate the 
false notions of a degenerate age, because they were 
popular with the masses, when those notions tended 
to disorganize society by presenting the characteristics 
of duplicity as an example for imitation to rising gen- 
erations. He did not suborn legislative minds for the 
passage of laws made suitable for the success of his 
financial schemes. He did not defraud his govern- 
ment of its revenues by the thief-like importation of 
goods, through which was built up the largest mercan- 
tile fortune in the metropolitan city of his country. 
He planted no factory under his residence to intoxicate 
mankind by the sale of its productions, and defraud 
his fellow-citizens, avoiding the discovery, and thus 
the visits, of revenue officials by the secresy of its 
locality. His noble qualities prevented him from fall- 
ing into the nothingness of the ape. He did not 
endorse the sentiments of powerful political parties, 
because they rewarded his services by the clojrment of 
his ambition. He was no contemptible sycophant, 
cringing to those in power for patronage. Orgasm 
had not arrived at that degree of progression which 
impelled one sex to forever blast the happiness of the 
other, violating the obligations of the marriage compact 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 41 

by the continual recurrence of incontinency, and 
culminating in the belief, among many of mankind, 
as it did with the pure and philosophic Essenes, ^ that 
no woman "preserves her fidelity to one man," and 
vice versa. He was not a professed Christian, attend- 
ing divine service with a sanctimonious countenance, 
while the nature of his stock-jobbing rendered him 
doubly meaner than the robber or the thief. He did 
not wink at the depravity of others, because he him- 
self was guilty of fraud. He did not cultivate the 
fellowship of the dishonest rich, because of those 
riches, and reject the same of the honest poor. He 
did not embezzle the funds entrusted to his charge. In 
short, he did not make rascality and deception points 
of scientific attainment, but appeared what he really 
was — a candid man, and a nobleman of nature. 

"What ruled in this early age of the world, when 
every faculty of man' s soul was in the discharge of its 
legitimate functions ? Was it the animal powers of the 
mind, that do in our own age ? If he were not rich, he 
did not study out the method by which he might 
become so by fraud upon his fellow. He was not 
engaged in the occupation of human bloodshed until 
the days of tribal government. His wants were few 
and easily satisfied, spending his time in the promotion 

2 Wars of the Jews. lib. 2. chap. 8, sect. 3. 



43 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

rather than in the perversion of the natural laws, by 
which he was kept within the effects of those faculties 
which produce the greatest happiness and the most 
lasting blessings. Could it have been "barbarism" 
that ruled primitive man, as its elements, in a softened 
sense, do us ? Was it not rather those great human 
attributes, those moral laws of justice and of kindness 
which were instituted by Providence in the beginning, 
and will continue to the end, of the world ; and as we, 
as individuals, as societies, and as nations, have 
attempted to pervert them, and shapen them to our 
own short-sighted purposes, they have invariably 
involved us in our own ruin ? Every nation, almost 
without exception, that has terminated its existence 
from the year one to the close of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, has fallen by a suicidal hand. Perversity to the 
laws was the immediate cause of its extinction. 

Man in the primitive age was in an independent 
condition, bound to no political rules, and to no 
regulations. No combinations of individuals required 
a partnership to the profits arising from his industry, 
which was no sooner obtained than squandered in 
the oppression and slaughter of his fellow men. 
His was a self-government, free and not dependent ; 
free from all debasing appetites. There were no 
centralized organizations so solicitous of his welfare 
as to curtail his liberty. He was independent 



GENERAL INTEODTJCTION. 43 

because he owed no obligations to a complicated 
and arbitrary government. 

Wherever there is a strong government there is 
just as strong evidence that a large portion of the 
people have a propensity to violate the rights of 
others. Under such circumstances monarchial rule 
must be maintained. But a free government can- 
not well exist in a land where an absolute polity 
has been the form to which the people have been 
accustomed. The reason is obvious. By its long 
establishment it has, in a measure, stilled free 
thought and inquiry, checked the mutual expression 
of principles that arise from equity and the spirit 
of independence. The practical effect of despotic 
tenets erases from the mind of the subordinate class 
all notions of self-government. Accustomed to being 
controlled, instead of controlling and keeping self 
within moral restraint, they know little or nothing 
about government in a condition of liberty. Having 
become habituated to corruption and misrule, and 
to the contemplation of outraged morality from birth 
to middle age, mind yields to impressions of pre- 
vailing evil. The habitude of mind to the impression 
of such criminal pleas as potentates foster, soon 
extinguishes moral elements from the masses. From 
generation to generation the operating causes are 



44 HISTOET OF THE DECLENSION. 

the same, dealing mortal blows to man's higher 
nature, the people in each succeeding half century 
inheriting a greater predisposition to crime, until 
virtue, as a controlling power, is entirely driven 
from the empire of mind. The bad conduct of the 
higher is imitated by the lower, and the views and 
habits of persons eminent for wealth, for birth, or 
for distinction, are readily appropriated by the nation. 
The ruled in despotic governments do not concern 
themselves to know whether the course taken by the 
executive be a just one. As monarchial powers subsist 
on selfish principles, and as also after long contin- 
uance they are productive of the same elements in 
the people at large, the probability is that the 
feelings of the nation would in time become entirely 
engaged with material, social, and political conse- 
quences. After these influences have weighed upon 
the mind for a couple of generations, the nation 
essentially becomes a menagerie, exhibiting naught 
but animal qualities. When a thirst for gold has 
taken hold of the people, there is little thought of 
but wealth, and nothing else respected. Respecting 
nothing but riches, for the rich only is legislation. 
After the whole nation has, in this manner, exerted 
those faculties common to the animals till the effect 
on character is complete, there is no true represen- 
tative of that nation but selfishness. If the power 



GENEBAL INTKODTJCTION. 46 

be an electoral, or an hereditary, one, the result is 
the same. The laws, therefore, enacted by a legis- 
lature, or by a crown, partake of the character of 
the people and of the times. 

If the elements of morality are not fundamental, 
then there are no such things as truth, justice and 
compassion within the comprehensibility of finite 
mind. But as it is generally conceded that there 
are moral faculties, it must also be conceded that 
they are adapted, by inherent constitution, to a 
superintending scope. As also all the other faculties 
are appointed to determinate functions, the moral 
were designed, or adapted, to predominate over the 
others, and thus direct the life. . 

There is no effect without its cause, and I think 
we may rationally conclude that whatever there is, 
which is an attribute of man's nature, it is an effect, 
the cause of which resides in the mind, and not 
educated into it through the intellectual. All men are 
possessed of the same number of faculties, although 
not in equal degree of development. Few are prepared 
to deny that justice and benevolence are intuitive 
in man ; they are peculiar feelings, their great devel- 
opment proper to man only. If man's moral feelings 
are derived from innate faculties, we are warranted in 
drawing the conclusion that the present man drew 
these primitive causes from his genetic predecessors. 



46 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

So that as lie received the primitive causes of mental 
qualities from no other source than from heredita- 
ment, he must be possessed of the same faculties 
to-day that he was in the primitive ages. 

When we read the first creditable records, and 
find that monarchial governments were already estab- 
lished, of which mention has been made, our 
attention is attracted by a state of things which 
corresponds less to a primitive than to a fallen con- 
dition. ^ So that the situation in which we first find 
man was one which already surrounded him with 
those external causes that tended still more to widen 
the departure. From this time forward, except in 
few instances, the course of mind was directed less 
toward a restoration than toward a degeneracy. 

The idea that man once held a moral status is what 
we here wish to impress upon the mind. Although 
we claim no more for it, in this place, than con- 
jecture, we think it to be altogether probable, and 
in a subsequent portion of the introduction will 
expose some views in outline, which, when carried 
out, will, we feel assured, establish the position 
beyond controversy. 



3 I think it may be fairly considered from the following passage, 
that the most enlightened ancients believed that monarchial governments 
had no existence until after man changed, in his mental qualities, from a 
primitive state. Sallust alleges that "rege9(nam in terris nomen imperii id 
primum fuit)," * * * that is, centralized power by organized govern- 
ments.— Sallust'S CONSPIRACT OF CATILINE, by Charles Anthon, page 79. 



CHAPTER in. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



The System of Education in the United States one of the Causes of the 
Moral Degeneracy of its People — Its Defective Nature having Extin- 
guished the most flourishing Governments of Modem Antiquity — 
Evidence of its Demoralizing Tendency from Grecian and Carthagin- 
ian States — Intellectual and Moral Qualities of the Lower Classes of 
the Carthaginians, compared with the same of the Lower Classes 
of the Greeks — Rise and Tendency of Philosophy — Its gi-eat effect 
upon the Intellectual powers — Compai'ison of the Moral and the 
Intellectual Condition of the Educated and the Uneducated Greeks — 
The Great Depravity of the former and comparative Moral Suprem- 
acy of the latter — The Rapid Development of the Propensities under 
influence of Greek Education, and consequent Extinction of Hel- 
lenic Freedom and Independence— Education too limited, not too 
extended — Being limited to the Intellectual, to the Religious and 
to the Animal — It becomes, indirectly, one of the Main Causes of 
the Disappearance of Virtue from the majority of the People of 
"The Great Republic" — Republican Governments dependent on 
Moral Principles — The method of Restoration and Preservation of 
the latter disclosed. 

The system of education now exclusively pursued, 
except a culture of the religious faculties, is the only 
one that ever was in vogue. This system has never 
addressed itself to any other portion of man's mind 
than his intellect. The strengthening of this by dis- 
cipline has received the almost undivided attention 

(47) 



48 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of the whole world, in all countries in which prevailed 
what is popularly termed "civilization," subsequent 
to the extension of philosophy from Greece. Public 
educators still pursue the same method without any 
departure, although they well know that the period 
of metaphysical domination has passed away — a sys- 
tem which dealt wholly with the reasoning powers 
of the mind, and with them only. There is not a 
system different from this in any institution of learn- 
ing and education now in being. It absorbs the 
attention of mankind at the present as much as in 
past ages, with only this difference, that it has been 
extended to greater multitudes. Some of the ablest 
apostles of this erroneous system have, of late, given 
expression to their views, to fasten still closer upon 
the feelings of the people that which, to this time, 
has never been opposed. The following is a rehash 
of it, to which all public educators give a firm 
endorsement : 

"Since civilization is the product of moral and 
intellectual agencies, and since that product is con- 
stantly changing, it evidently cannot be regulated by 
the stationary agent, because, when surrounding cir- 
cumstances are changed, a stationary agent can only 
produce a stationary effect. The only other agent is 
the intellectual one, and that this is the real mover 
may be proved in two different ways: first, because 
being, as we have already shown, either moral or 
intellectual, and being, as we have also seen, not 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 49 

moral, it mnst be intellectual ; and secondly, because 
the intellectual principle lias an activity and capacity 
for adaptation, which, as we undertake to show, is 
quite sufficient to account for the extraordinary 
progress that, during several centuries, Europe has 
continued to make."^ 

That this doctrine is false in theory and most dis- 
astrous in practice, we shall now proceed to show, 
not by thought-out notions, but by a parallel history 
of the lower classes of the Carthaginians to the same 
of the Greeks, and finally, by comparison of the 
educated with the uneducated classes of the Hellenic 
states. This can only be wrought by an investiga- 
tion into the intellectual and moral qualities of these 
classes. If we are able to prove that the lower classes 
of Carthage were more cultivated than the same in 
Greece, and if also we afterward prove that they were 
less moral, it will necessarily follow that the virtue of 
any nation does not depend upon the intelligence of 
its people. If, moreover, we are able to establish, by 
comparison between the two (the educated and the 
uneducated) classes of the Greeks, that their educated 
minds were depraved in proportion to the culture 
which they had received, it will place this question 
beyond controversy, that if the discipline of the intel- 
lectual powers does not directly contribute to the 

I Buckle's History of Civilizatioa in England, vol. 1, pages 130 and 13L 
4 



50 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

overthrow of the moral sentiments, it cannot be held 
that it is productive of their elevation. This is all 
we seek to prove, and that, we think, by incontestable 
evidence. 

All that can be gathered of the intellectual educa- 
tion of this branch of the Phoenician race, from the 
remains of Carthaginian literature, is very narrow 
indeed. We shall have, therefore, to rely on writers 
of contemporary nations. And again in them even 
the facts, upon which the investigator has chiefly to 
depend, are not readily furnished to his hand, as the 
historians of the age in which this government existed 
were rather chroniclers of battles, sieges and wars, 
than commentators upon the character and condition 
of those peoples upon which they pretend to treat. 
Carthaginian literature perished with its people. 
Being deprived, therefore, of perusing the details of 
a Carthaginian in the history of his own country, 
and also not fully able to determine these facts of 
civilization directly from Roman and Grecian authors, 
we shall be compelled to discover the moral and 
intellectual condition of this republic from those 
collateral relations which it bore, during its long 
existence, to other powers. This review shall be a 
short one on the Carthaginians. 

Soon after her colonization, Carthage built the 
foundations of her strength and glory on the ruins 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 61 

and fallen liberties of other African states. ^ She 
brought into governmental subordination the wander- 
ing tribes of the northern portion of the continent, 
and taught them the application of those natural laws 
to husbandry, to a more scientific extent, than that 
which was carried on by her less civilized contem- 
poraries of the East and the North. This sagacious 
people foresaw that their pupils would be rewarded 
pro rata to their application to the pursuit ; this 
depended altogether on the predisposition of these 
nomades for the acquisition of earthly goods. ^ For 
this element of the mind it has long been observed 
that no people are more remarkable than the uncivil- 
ized. The intelligent mind subordinates this appetite 
to the conditions of his wants, for the sustenance and 



2 "The case with Carthage was entirely different. Built on the edge of 
a large quarter of the globe, whole warlike nomades afforded, for pay, 
numerous armies; and almost surrounded by countries without a master, 
she lould conquer, and soon fi>und it her interest so to do. For the first 
time, therefore, history shows us a free and commercial state, whose great- 
ness was founded upon foreign possessions acquired by force of arms." — 
Heeren's Historical Works, vol. 4, page 22. 

3 " This line of conduct was planted In the spirit of the aristocratic 
government, whoro such maxims so easily become hereditary in the ruling 
familios, of which history gives us such evident proof as to leave no doubt 
of the fact. 

" This" intermixture " answered the double purpose of maintaining their 
authority and improving the connection and intermixture with tho original 
inhabitants, which, as wo see. produced the Liby-Phcenician race. No state 
in tho ancient world, probably, understood or prosecuted on a larger scale 
the colonial system than Carthage."— Ibid., pages 18 and 23. 

" In this way Cartha.-^o preserves tho love of her people. She sends out 
colonies continually into districts around her, and by that means makes them 
men of property."— Aristot. Of., page 253. 



52 HISTOET OF THE DECLENSIOJS". 

education of his family. But the more uncultivated 
portions of the human race have always been remark 
able for possessing strong greed for whatever relates 
to the value of property without much regard to the 
uses to which it can be applied. The Carthaginians, 
foreseeing that one nation cannot introduce a half- 
civilized people into industrious pursuits, so that tlm 
state can draw a revenue from them without first 
planting with them the elements of prosperity, made 
them thoroughly acquainted with the principles of 
agriculture, first regarding it themselves as the most 
honorable employment in which man can be engaged. 
The first families of Carthage, as well as of Rome, 
vrere agriculturists, many of whom were the greatest 
military and political characters of the state. 

In the settlement of lands belonging to the republic, 
the Carthaginians caused an intermixture of their own 
race with the inhabitants of tliose tribes which they 
had subdued and planted as colonists. It requires no 
stretch of the mind to understand the efiects, — that 
there would naturally be a spirit of competition 
and strife for those advantages which result from 
riches. Accordingly the forests which contained 
arable land, and which before had been the retreat 
of wild beasts, receded before the ingenuity of this 
energetic nation, afterward becoming the source from 
which she first drew the principal part of her 



GENERAL USTTRODUOTION. 63 

support and a considerable share of her wealth. 
Neither Greece nor Rome, with all its boasted supe- 
riority of intellectuality, presented an example of 
the like mental reach, first buying the territory on 
which she built her city then defrauding the vendors 
out of its value, subordinating them into peaceable 
citizens and afterward causing them to become 
attached to the state. An example of like success 
cannot be found in historical records. There is no 
nation of modern Europe, or of America, which 
eflfects so much for its poorer classes as did this 
republic for the first conquered tribes of Africa. 
The Carthaginians seemed to have connected the 
interests of these subordinated nations so closely 
with their own, by marriage, special legislation and 
other acts of similar efiects, as to make the welfare 
of the state an object of regard and veneration. 

She did not make this her policy with Sardinia, 
SicUy and Spain. And herein lay her weakness, but 
it was toward the closing hours of her existence. By 
not carrying into efiect, as part of her policy in the 
conquest of these territories, those partial moral prin- 
ciples in their practical application to independent 
states, after they were subordinated to her power, 
she converted them into so many enemies, who 
hated her as a nation and earnestly desired its ter- 
mination. Spain was principally conquered by her 



54 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

to serve as a base of operations in a second war 
which she then meditated against Rome. She had 
lost, by the first Punic war, her possessions in the 
island of Sicily, and therefore could not use it as a 
military station from which to proceed. Besides, 
had she attempted its reconquest, it would have 
brought on the second war with Rome at a time 
in which the latter would have been as well pre- 
pared as herself; this she wished to avoid until she 
had a veteran army, subordinated the whole of Spain 
and shaken the fears of the Gauls. Having accom- 
plished these, she could draw her stores, raise her 
armies and attack the Roman power at a time when 
she would find it destitute of military provisions, of 
disciplined troops, and powerless before a victorious 
enemy. She had, by the conquest of Spain, pos- 
sessed herself of rich mines to supply the exchequer 
in payment of troops, and for the seventeen years 
which the second Punic war lasted she drew her 
funds mostly from these mines to defray expenses. 
By the wealth which she drew from this new source, 
she was enabled to emancipate her subjects in Africa 
from the burdens of the war. 

Although Rome lost, in different battles, several 
consular armies, and was threatened with subjection, 
Carthage in the end was brought to the position of 
a dependent slave. After the conclusion of the war 



GENERAL INTRODUCTIOK. 65 

the petty princes of Africa, wlio had formerly been 
chiefs of tributary states, daily insulted a capital of 
seven hundred thousand inhabitants. No person 
can charge Hannibal with the responsibility of this 
war, as his acts were ratified by the nation, when 
the Roman embassy visited the capital of that 
celebrated nation immediately after the taking of 
Saguntum. * 

Carthage's equitable treatment of the first subdued 
people of Africa, surrounding the capital, was to her 
as much a matter of necessity as one of justice, as she 
could not repose the foundations of government upon 
those turbid elements and civil commotions which are 
generated by corruption and fraud in the governing 
power. As a state constructs its political fabric in 
partiality, in favor of one portion of the inhabitants 
and in suppression of the rights of the other, so may 
be measured the term of its existence. For it is 



4 After Hannibal had attacked Saguntum, a Roman embassy was dis- 
patched by the senate to enquire if this movement of their gener.i' were at 
the orders of his government. After the senators of Carthaso had treated 
this embassy in the most insolent manner, their speaker concluded his 
reply to the Romans by saying: '"Cease, therefore, to talk of Saguntum 
and the Iberus, and let your minds give birth, at length, to the burden of 
which they are long in labor.' Tho Roman [Quintius Fabius] then loldin^ 
up a corner of his robe said : ' Here wc bring you peaco and war take 
which you choose.' Which proposal they answered with an equal degree of 
peremptory heat, calling out that he should give which ho chose. lie then 
throw open the fold again, and said that he gave them war. They with one 
voice replied that they accepted it, and with the same spirit with which 
they accepted it, would prosecute it."— Titus Livitrs' History op Roiie, 
lib. 21, paragraph 18, Baker. 



•56 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

a necessity that such should terminate itself. The 
.causes of its own destruction are planted in its con- 
stitution, as the principal and most powerful element 
of which it is composed. These inequitabilities, sooner 
or later, must work the ruin or subversion of any gov- 
ernment so constituted, and from them there is no 
escape. The first Carthaginians were acute enough, 
in their understanding, to comprehend these causes 
and effects upon the civil institutions of mankind. 
Those distant generations, however, which followed 
in time the founders of the republic, were more cor- 
rupt, and consequently their legislation corresponded 
to their moral condition. A long time had elapsed 
from the building of the city to the conquest of Sar- 
dinia, Sicily and Spain. And we find, as we pass 
from the first to the last ages of the republic, there 
was a proportionate degeneration in the morals of the 
state. As Carthage advanced in age, in wealth and 
in the conquest of the earth, the abilities of her 
statesmen diminished in the comprehension of first 
principles. Although she was acute and mostly out- 
witted her contemporaries, the depravity of her 
citizens blinded the nation to the comprehension 
of elementary law; her wisdom permitted present 
triumph, but insured future defeat. This was true 
in her policy at the close of her career. It may 
occur to the understanding as something remarkable 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 67 

that as a nation becomes enriclied, refined and 
accomplished, it at the same time recedes in intel- 
lectuality. But the intellectual faculties are instru- 
ments by which those faculties which are possessed 
of feelings work out certain results satisfactorily to 
their quality and condition. For without a moral 
nature there can be no comprehension of questions 
involving moral principles, however great may be 
the intellectuality of any given nation. In proportion 
to the atrophy of the former there is, correlatively, 
an inability to discover equities in legislative laws. 
Therefore, as these, the most important faculties of 
the mind, disappear, there arises a certain intellectual 
weakness, a certain incapacity to comprehend great 
questions, which, when not properly controlled, fre- 
quently involve a whole people in interminable ruin. 
Wherefore, as we approach the last days of Carthage 
and discover her corruption, we at the same time find 
that as her statesmen were promoting measures which 
they supposed would extend her dominions and 
forward the supremacy of her power, they were 
combining elements into such an antagonism as 
wrought her self-subordination, and in the end, her 
total extinction. 

Had Carthage not bought and sold the offices of 
state, by the good or ill administration of which a 
political body becomes permanent or endures a 



58 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

political death ; had she not made riches and military 
skill a test of public approbation ; had she not substi- 
tuted the worthless value of a base metal for the 
nobler qualities of man ; in a word, had she not 
exalted vice above virtue in every manner, she could 
not have been conquered by the combined powers of 
the earth, and would have survived the wreck of 
nations in the ancient and middle ages. Standing 
upon the records of the past she would be an apt 
representation of well known effects which follow as 
a blessing to all who obey those eternal principles 
which control the moral universe. 

The inhabitants of Carthage, in its earlier days, 
foresaw these causes and effects, while their distant 
successors did not. The former built for endur- 
ance, while the latter lived, not to preserve, but to 
destroy. A nation which is thus able, in the policy 
of her legislation, to forecast the causes of permanent 
prosperity and secure it to herself, exhibits a com- 
prehensiveness in first principles that is far from 
being common, even now, (with all our boasted pro- 
gress,) to the nations of the earth. But the first 
institutions of Carthage fell into other hands in more 
degenerate days, and were finally extinguished by 
the maladministration of their rulers. 

Neither Greece nor Rome manifested such capacity 
in its treatment of the tribes and nations not of its 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 69 

own origin but subjected to its power. The earlier 
inhabitants of Carthage discovered greater sagacity 
than any nation of antiquity, and even outwitted all 
contemporary powers. Grreece, during the reign of 
Alexander, entered upon her campaigns apparently 
for no other purpose than the mere capture of cities 
and the conquest of nations. Nor can there be gleaned 
from his wars any other motive than that vanity 
which flatters the conceit of a weak and dissolute 
prince.^ Greece gained nothing by these wars but 
the hatred of all mankind. Although her soldiery 
derived plunder, the nation acquired no more than 
implacable enemies filled with revenge. Yet the 
lower classes of the Greeks cannot be charged with 
the responsibility of Alexander's wars, as they were 
not the willful acts of the nation. They themselves 
had attempted to resist the authority of his aggressive 
policy, but were finally reduced to servitude by his 
cunning and unprincipled ambition. During his 
foreign wars they were slaves to his empire ; his will 
was the highest law and they were forced to obey. 



5 The Sjthian ambassador spoke very judiciously when he addressed 
him in these words: "What have we to do with thee? We never once put 
our feet In thy country. Are not those who live In the woods allowed to be 
ignorant of thee and the place from whence thou earnest? Thou boastest 
that the only design of thy marching is to extirpate robbers; thou art, 
thyself, the greatest robber in the world. This Is Alexander's exact character, 
in which there is nothing to bo rejected." — RoiiiiiN's Ancient Histobt, vol. 
1, pages COl and 602. 



60 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Upon tlie death of Alexander his kingdom answered 
to the four quarters of the globe by falling into as 
many great divisions. These became independent 
states, each one of which, being composed of a great 
number of different races, habituated to a variety of 
customs, in manner of living, language, thinking, 
government and religion, that it was next to impos- 
sible to reconcile the discordant elments and conciliate 
them into such an uniformity as is necessary to give 
firmness and steadiness to the political and social 
composition of a nation. So, therefore, the whole 
Asiatic world, with Greece, having been subjected 
to a war of twelve years duration by a royal des- 
perado with his dupes, slaves and victims, were now 
to undergo a worse one, if possible, waged by con- 
tending factions which were themselves generated by 
those special creatures of war — duplicity, crime and 
barbarity. 

The double infamy produced by the severe educa- 
tion that the intellectual faculties of the higher classes 
of the Greeks had received, reduced all ranks into 
vassalage to the same elements in the Macedonian 
princes. The uneducated and non-commercial grades 
of Greece were the only repositories of virtue ; becom- 
ing, in the first instance, victims to a defective mode of 
intellectual development; in the second, and depend- 
ing upon the first for active vitality, they were made 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 61 

lielpless dupes fo the selfish principles which actuated 
Philip and his successor in their illusory careers. 
With the lower classes of Carthage it was entirely 
different. More enlightened in their understandings 
than the same among the Greeks, they very quickly 
perceived and adopted the false, the double attitude 
which their higher orders had cultivated for more 
than two hundred years before their political organi- 
zation was extinguished. How much, or whether at 
all, to a certainty, the civil wars in the Hellenic states 
had injured the moral qualities of the masses, cannot 
be very accurately determined ; but it is certain that 
as they were constantly the objects of deception, they 
were not sufficiently steeped in corruption to detect 
the false position which their educated guides were 
able to maintain. 

Although Greece was the source of speculative 
thought, her higher classes were possessed of less 
political foresight than those of Carthage. By the 
defective policy of the Greeks they became slaves 
to one of their own number, while the Carthaginians 
came very near being masters of the whole world. 
The campaigns of Alexander subjected the con- 
quered territories to his own interests, while those 
of Carthage were spoils of which all partook. 

After a careful review of the conquests of Greece 
and their final end, one can deduce no real advantage 



62 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

which resulted to its empire, neither to its exchequer, 
to the morals of the people, nor to the stability of the 
state. But on the contrary, it became a prey to inter- 
nal dissensions, external wars, a depleted treasury, 
unimproved morals, and, as far as relates to the 
external relations of the people, to the victorious 
arms of faction. 

While the first few generations of Carthage, from 
six to eight centuries before Christ, possessed barely 
enough virtue to comprehend moral principles, the 
people of Greece at the corresponding time maintained 
great endowments of it. As much as the former 
were fallen below, the latter were raised above, the 
average morality of the age. "With the superior 
intelligence of the former, although they possessed 
less morality, they were enabled to see deeper and 
broader into nature's unvarying principles than the 
latter. It is, therefore, concluded that as the Greeks 
possessed generally greater faculties of a moral nature 
to found state constitutions in equitable laws, we 
should find with them, had they the same amount 
of intelligence, peace, permanence and wealth, with 
no civil commotions at home and no wars abroad. 
Such, however, was not true. They were constantly 
at war — that is, the difierent states were almost 
perpetually at war with each other. The Pelop- 
onnesian war lasted twenty-seven and a half years, 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 63 

terminating in the subjection of Athens to the 
authority of Lacedsemon. 

It was not long before the military strength of 
Carthage was increasod to such degree as to compete 
with Rome for the supremacy of the world, that the 
Ionic, the Pythagorean, Eleatic, Atomistic and Socratic 
philosophies had their birth in Greece. After the 
establishment of these, reason began to dawn upon 
the mind of the Greek. But speculative thought never 
did extend itself to the people at large. A few only 
were enabled by the study of philosophy to develop 
their intellectual powers, the masses remaining in a 
totally uncultivated condition. If the masses could 
read and write, the reasoning powers were not enlarged 
by close application to such subjects as tended to 
develop their strength. Perhaps it would be making 
a large allowance, before the Peloponnesian war, to 
say that one to the thousand derived any benefit from 
the study of philosophy. There were no public or 
private schools spread over Greece authorized to teach 
philosophy; only now and then one sprang up at 
various times, and somewhat at distant periods. 

The Ionic philosophy, founded about 650 B. C. by 
Thales, was little studied, and less understood than 
that of the Pythagorean, which shortly after succeeded 
it. The latter had but little hold upon the intellectual 
portion of the mind, but so well addressed itself to the 



64 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

general tendencies of subordination in this age of the 
world, as to be readily received and adopted by the 
masses. Almost the whole of this philosophy was a 
myth, and this accounts for its popularity. It is said 
that its founder pretended to raise the dead and work 
other astounding miracles. His instructions were 
indoctrinated with the absurd superstitions of the 
Egyptian priesthood. But the philosophy of Thales 
was barely known, so little so, that scarcely anything 
now remains of the doctrines he taught. Had it been 
extensively studied, it had been as extensively pre- 
served, as no people of antiquity exhibited greater 
care in the preservation of their moral and intellectual 
status, than the Greeks. 

Thales endeavored to discover the primary or 
original source of the organic world by a rational 
method. However irrational this may occur to us, 
it had at all events, strong tendencies if followed, to 
strengthen the intellectual powers, and this is all 
we claim by our present enquiry into the various 
philosophies of Greece. 

The study of the Pythagorean doctrine, as we 
cannot call it a philosophy, tended more to enlarge 
those faculties which produce religious characteristics, 
than develop the primitive faculties of reason. The 
basis of his natural philosophy was an absurd myth, 
numbers, and could be supported by no process of 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION". 65 

reasoning which would call the intellect into vigorous 
activity. 

The Eleatic existed as nearly contemporary with 
the Pythagorean, both at or about 500 B. C. It was 
a departure from the latter by a modification of it, 
Anaxagoras was nearly contemporary with Xeno- 
phanes, and was the first who established any system 
of education at Athens. But this, after it had operated 
upon the intellectual powers for many years, was 
abruptly brought to a conclusion by the ostracism of 
its author. His doctrines directly engaged the intellect 
in vigorous activity, and soon expunged superstitious 
notions from the mind of the student. This system of 
philosophy did not accord well with the marvelous 
tendencies of the uneducated, and he was compelled 
to fly from Athens, having been accused of profanation 
and impiety to the gods. 

As for Empedocles, he pretended to be a prophet, 
claiming that the operations of the natural laws could 
be arrested by the Divine power which he had authority 
to represent. It is unnecessary to say more of him 
and his teachings than that one, who is so disordered 
in his mind, or so infamous in his character, as to lay 
claims to such transcendent power, is unfit, in the 
organization of his mind, for philosophical investiga- 
tion. Both Empedocles and Pythagoras, in this 
respect, were in one and the same category. The 
5 



66 IIISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

extreme development of the feelings of superstition 
with great imagination, or the strong inherent qualities 
in their mental being of selfish exaltation above all 
other earthly mortals, silenced the expressions of the 
moral sentiments and the lights of reason. But we 
have no information that Empedocles was extensively 
engaged in teaching philosophy. The doctrines of 
Empedocles, as also those of Pythagoras, tended not 
so much to enlarge the understanding of the Greek 
mind, as they did to distract, and thereby destroy 
all energetic concentration of the mental powers, 
and thus prepare the way for the establishment of 
that atheism upon their ruins, which characterized 
the higher classes that immediately preceded the 
Peloponnesian war. 

Protagoras has the reputation of being the founder 
of the Sophistic school of thought at Athens, where 
he taught his erroneous principles and from which 
he was expelled by the masses. He was driven out 
by the populace on account of his doctrines being 
destructive, as they supposed, of both systems of 
government, the moral and the divine. His philo- 
sophical conclusions, although rejected by the lower, 
were adopted by many of the higher classes, and 
became the practical rule of their lives in religion and 
in manners. Although Protagoras was a teacher of 
morals as part of his system of instruction, the 



GENERAL INTEODUCTIOl^. 67 

general scepticism of his philosophy, denying alJ future 
accountability, rendered his doctrine of ethics unpopu- 
lar with the main body of the nation. Besides the 
moral instruction which he was said to have given 
must have been of a very doubtful character. ^ But the 
successors of Protagoras traduced the principles of 
their master, substituting for morality doctrines 
wholly selfish in nature.' 

The Atomistic, which preceded it by about twenty 
years, and, in part, had given rise and life to the 
Protagrean, seemed to combine with it in destroying 
those elements of the mind, fear on the one hand, and 
the feelings of justice on the other, the only foundation 
of moral government in the mind of man. The 
Atomistic philosophers derived the origin of the 
organic world, both mental and material "from an 
originally unlimited number of constituent elements, 
or atoms," which are constantly changing in respect 
to form, but not in quality. This derivation of the 
organic world, of the animal and phrenic life, became 

6 Schwegler says that a part of the Sophists " openly taught the right of 
the stronger as the law of nature, the unbridled satisfaction of desire as the 
natural right of the stronger, and the setting up of restraining laws as a 
crafty invention of the weaker; and Critias, the most talented but the most 
abandonod of the thirty tyrants, wrote a poem in which he represented the 
faith in tlie gods as an invention of crafty statesmen."— Histoky of Philoso- 
PHV, p. 50. 

7 "The later Sophists, with reckless daring, carried their conclusions far 
beyond Georgias and Protagoras. They were for the most part free think- 
ers who pulled to the ground the religion, laws, and customs of their birth." — 
Ibid. 



68 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the prevailing belief of the learned classes, and they 
accordingly decreed their own existence, not from the 
creative power of a Supreme Being, but from the 
combined operations of the natural laws upon certain 
properties of matter. While the lower classes were 
almost totally ignorant of this negation of all punative 
conditions under the natural laws in time, and the 
supernatural in eternity, the educated portions, princi- 
pally through these false philosophies as contribu- 
tory causes, and regarding everything as expediency 
rather than as morality, became abandoned, no longer 
believing any kind of laws obligatory upon them, and 
were in consequence fallen into a corruption almost 
incredible with the Greeks.® At the time of the 
Peloponnesian war, the uneducated were moral, while 
the learned were base in every respect and committed 
all grades of crime from larcenies on the treasury, ® 

8 " Custom had lost its weight ; the laws were regarded as only an agree- 
ment of the majority, the civil ordinances as an arbitrary restriction, the 

"moral feelings as the effect of the policy of the state education, the faith in 
the gods as a human invention to intimidate the free power of action, while 
piety was looked upon as a statute which some men have enacted and which 
all are justified in using all their eloquence to change. This degradation of a 
necessity, which is conformable to nature and reason, ♦ ♦ * is chiefly the point 
in which the Sophistic philosophy came in contact with the universal con- 
sciousness of the educated classes of the period, and we cannot with certainty 
say what share science and what shaie the life may have had in this connec- 
tion,— whether the Sophistic philosophy found only the theoretical formula 
for the practical life and tendencies of the age, or whether the moral corrup- 
tion was rather a consequence of that deductive influence which the principles 
of the Sophists exerted upon the whole course of contemporaneous thought." 
SCHWEGLER's HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, pages 44 and 45. 

9 "The very officers now made interest with the people to have him [Aris- 
tides] continued a third year in the same employment. But when the time 



GEKERAL INTRODUCTION. 69 

to secret assassination and public murder. * ° The vir- 
tues of an Aristides no longer exerted influence on the 
ruling classes, and the character of Pericles was tar- 
nished by a questionable ambition. * * With the latter, 
the end justified the means, and as the ruling pas- 
sions of his soul were those of political pre-eminence 
coupled with unlimited power, ^ ^ he denied himself of 



of election was come, just as they were upon the point of electing Aristides 
unanimously, he rose up and warmly reproved the Athenian people. 'What,' 
says he, ' when I managed your treasure with all the fidelity and diligence an 
honest man is capable of, I met with the most cruel treatment and the most 
mortifying return, and now that I have abandoned it to all these robbers of 
the public, I am an admirable man and the best of citizens. I cannot help 
declaring to you that I am more ashamed of the honor you do me this day, 
than I was the condemnation you passed against me this time twelvemonth, 
and with grief I find it is more glorious, more complaisant with knaves, than 
to save the treasures of the republic' By this declaration he silenced the pub- 
lic plunderers and gained the esteem of all good men."— Rollin's Ancient 
History, vol. 1, page 242. 

10 When the thirty tyrants had disarmed the public and strengthened 
themselves by an armed force of three thousand, they brought many false 
charges against good citizens, and " put them to death for the gratification of 
their hatred, and many others for the sake of their property. And in order 
that they might have more money to give the guards, they determined to 
choose one each of the resident aliens, and having put them to death to 
confiscate their property." 

Cleocritus in his speech discloses this horrible state of the ruling classes 
at the period of the Peloponnesian war. He said : " Be not persuaded by 
those most impious thirty, who, for the sake of their own gain, have killed 
almost more of the Athenians in eight months than all the Peloponnesians in 
ten years' warfare." — Hellenics, lib. 3, sections 30 and 31. 

11 Rollin says that when Pericles "saw Aristides dead, Themistoclcs ban- 
ished and Cimon engaged almost continually in foreign wars and absent from 
Greece, he began to appear in public with greater confidence than before, and 
entirely devoted himself to the party of the people, but not out of inclination, 
for he was far from effecting popular power, but to remove all suspicions of 
his aspiring to the tyranny."— Ancient History, vol. 1, page 331. 

12 The same authority remarks that " Pericles may be said to have 
attained monarchical power under a republican form of government, mold- 
ing the citizens into what shape he pleased, and presiding with unlimited 



70 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

every enjoyment, of every right, and privilege which he 
deemed to be in opposition to the one end and object of 
his life. Distrusting the fidelity of that educated class 
to which he belonged, he addressed himself, with all 
the energy and sagacity of his soul, to gain the esteem 
and electoral favors of the lower ranks. He dare not 
entrust his political career to the learned, who, as expe- 
rience had taught him, were actuated by feelings of 
jealousy toward competitors, unscrupulously sacrific- 
ing the liberties and lives of their contemporaries in 
the pursuit of gold and of distinction. That the 
source of virtue was the source of energy, Pericles, in 
all probability, very well understood, easily discerning 
that its only repository in Greece was with the lower 
classes. Remembering the fate and illustrious charac- 
ter of his predecessor, he was actuated by ambition for 
present exaltation, and a name famous for virtue and 
ability in succeeding ages. To ingratiate himself into 
the lasting friendship of the people, whose minds had 
not been corrupted by the principles of the higher 
orders, he introduced among them that extravagance 
in living, luxury and debauchery, ^ ^ which, when 



authority in all their assemblies. And indeed Valerius Maxlmus makes scarce 
any difference other between Pisistratus and Pericles than the one exercised 
a tyrannical power by force of arms, and the other by the strength of his 
eloquence." More adroit and deceptive in his designs.— Ancient History, 
vol. 1, page 281. 

13 " He was the first who caused the conquered lands to be divided among 
the citizens, who distributed among them the public revenues for the expense 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 71 

extended to the common people, infects and rots 
the noblest qualities of the human mind. The 
aping by the poorer after the fashions and prodi- 
galities of the rich, out of desire to be taken for 
what they were not, excited a profusion in expendi- 
ture, which had it become common, as he intended 
it should, would have left the state impoverished in 
money and morals. He did drain the treasury, and 
to some extent injured the good habits of the people.^* 
He ruled Athens with almost despotic power for forty 
years, the last fifteen of which he had no rival ; and 
as he was amply rewarded for his great ability, not 
for his fidelity, by the highest honors of the state, he 
was by this same people, who at times were justly sus- 
picious of his conduct and designs toward their liber- 
ties, frequently deposed and condemned. ^^ While 

of their games and shows, and annexed pensions to all public employments ; 
so that certain sums were bestowed on them regularly, as well to procure 
them a place at the games as for their attendance in the court of justice and 
the assemblies. It is impossible to say how fatal this, unhappily, was to the 
republic, and how many evils it drew after it. For these new regulations, 
besides draining the public treasury, gave the people a fondness for expen.so 
and a dissolute turn of mind, whereas they before were sober and modest, and 
contented themselves in getting a livelihood by their sweat and labor." — 
Rollins Ancient History, vol. 1, page 283. 

14 Rollin quotes Plato as " saying that the latter [Pericles] formed a judg- 
ment of things from their outward splendor,' and "' observes that Pericles, 
with all his grand edifices and other works, had not improved the minds of 
the citizens in virtue, but rather corrupted the purity and simplicity of ancient 
manners. "—Ibid, 285. 

15 "The Athenians did not design to sue for peace any more to the 
Lacedaemonians, but the mere sight of Pericles and his presence were insup- 
portalle to them. They therefore deprived him^ of the command of the army, 
and sentenced him to pay a fine, which, according to some historians, 
amounted to fifteen, and axjcordlng to others, to fifty, talents. '—Ibid, 303. 



72 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

mankind have found mucli to admire in the character 
of this remarkable man, they have also discovered in 
him an insatiable ambition for notoriety and a greed 
for political might, which knew no measures but those 
that were adapted by their nature to insure success. 

Aristides laid the foundations of the government 
upon a basis which tended to insure perpetuity, ^ ^ 
while Pericles, to whose qualities of statesmanship 
sonnets are continually sung, removed their exist- 
ence. The former increased the morals of the people, 
thereby giving vitality to the republic, while the latter 
introduced corruptions, which not only lessened the 
happiness of the people, but narrowed their earthly 
existence, forwarding measures which very much 
tended to shorten the age of the republic and end 
its liberties forever. Pericles had been educated by 
the philosopher Anaxagoras, the most distinguished 
thinker in Gfreece. 

The military talents of Miltiades were no protection 
to his life, but excited the envy and hatred of Grecian 
aspirants for position, and was finally accused of trea- 
son to the state by them, and condemned to die the 
death of an infamous malefactor. In view, however. 



16 The same authority mentions Plutarch as alleging that the house of 
Aristides was always open to the young men of Athens, and that it was a 
school for virtue, wisdom and politics ; that all young men of Athens used to 
consult him as an oracle ; he gave them the kindest reception, heard them 
with patience, and when not in office was always engaged, when opportunity 
afforded him, in teaching virtue. — Roujin s Ancient History, vol. 1, page 371. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 73 

of his having rendered the greatest service to his 
country, with becoming modesty and prodigious 
martial ability, his sentence was commuted to a fine 
of fifty talents; and upon the insufficiency of his 
estate to meet the demands, was committed to prison, 
wherein he died of wounds received while opposing 
the Persian arms.^'' The learning or education of a 
few of the rich and poor did not enlarge the feelings 
of human kindness, but on the contrary became, as 
we shall hereafter more clearly discover, accompanied 
with the most degrading vices, and in proportion as 
the nation became intellectually educated, it became 
also correspondingly depraved. Mr. Buckle and 
many other, and I may say all other, educators, 
distinctly argue that intellectual education correspond- 
ingly elevates the morality of nations, and tends 
to put an end to the crimes and wars of mankind. 

The great superstitious tendencies of the minds 
of Pythagoras and Empedocles, having been so 
much absorbed upon the marvelous and super- 
natural, were arrested from the contemplation of 



17 " Little probability as there was in this accusation (treasoD ), it neverthe- 
less prevailed over the merit and innocence of Miltiades. He was condemned 
to lose his life, and to be thrown into the Barathrom ; a sentence passed only 
upon the greatest criminals and malefactors. The magistrate opposed the 
execution of so unjust a condemnation. All the favor shown to this preserver 
of his country, was to have the seatence of death commuted into a penalty 
of fifty talents, or fifty thousand crowns French mcpey. Not being rich 
enough to pay this sum, he was put into prison, where he died of wounds 
received at Paros."— Bollin's Anoient Histobt, vol. 1, page 245. 



74 niSTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

natural principles, and could have had no decided 
effect on the culture of the age, other than the influ- 
ence which enthralls the mental in bondage to the 
theological teachings of ancient and anti-christian 
priestcraft. Their philosophical doctrines, therefore, 
must not be regarded as exerting the intellectual facul- 
ties, but as an hindrance to the intellectual development 
of their disciples. The Ionic, which, as has been 
observed, was not preserved otherwise than by tradi- 
tion, and in this manner, exposed to the dangers of 
expunction, was very liable to such modifications and 
corruptions, if not so far lost as to render no contri- 
bution to the activity of human reason. We, therefore, 
pass over the philosophies of Thales, Pythagoras and 
Empedocles, as producing little activity to the faculties 
of reflection, other than that the first gave a new 
direction to mentality by the institution of a subject 
of thought and reason, not so far removed from human 
comprehensibility, but that the mental powers could 
seize upon some fact known to the experience of man. 
But the Eleatic and the Atomistic, by their directive 
and analytic course, introduced the Greek mind into 
a more rigid method and habit of investigation, and 
although they were not the immediate cause of treas- 
uring up in the memory storehouses of learning, they, 
at least, produced a development of intellectual activity 
that greatly strengthened the understanding; and by 



GENEEAL INTRODUCTION". 76 

a close and thorough study of these two systems of 
thought, the mind of the student would be enabled to 
grapple with considerable power the most abstract 
theses which were then within the reach of finite minds. 

The later advocates of the Eleatic and Atomistic 
doctrines, ignored all objective realities, and all finite 
determinateness, denied the existence of the gods, and 
taught the mere fact of being. This shows that the 
reasoning powers had become so far disciplined as to 
emancipate their votaries from the superstition, which, 
during their age, prevailed in Greece. As this objective 
reality was the external world, there was, therefore, no 
physical existence, no matter, no time, no anything, 
but the void space and the mere postulation of being. 
This being was considered by them as an universal 
principle It is difficult to discover what this principle 
was, if other than a mere name; the discussion of 
which involved the explanation of the one by the 
other in all probability. This failing to arrive at a 
substratum, confounded the name with the supposed 
principle, so that neither could take any positive form 
in the mind of the instructed. But the analytical 
operations through which the mind was necessarily 
forced to effect a negation of all other conditions, 
wrought prodigious consequences in the intellectuality 
of the Greeks. ' 

This doctrine carried out to its utmost limits 



76 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

established atheism in the entirety of its meaning. 
This constant being of the Eleatic philosophy was, for 
the first time, made the subject of philosophical 
abstraction, althougn an exact equivalent of it had 
been taught ages before this, having been the secret 
theological faith in all eastern countries. The priests 
among the Egyptians, the Magi among the Chaldeans, 
Assyrians and Persians, believed and taught it in 
secret councils to those designed for the sacred orders, 
while their attitude to the people was marked by a 
superstitious belief in working miracles and perform- 
ing other marvelous ceremonies which corresponded 
to the condition of the laity. 

The Eleatic doctors having annihilated the external 
world to their satisfaction, directed their speculations 
upon the infinite. This soon met the same fate, being 
considered by them also as an universal principle, 
which was almost the same to them then that pan- 
theism is to us now. After these doctrines had 
reached this stage of the case in their bearings, they 
were, we think, divested of some of their first pre- 
disposing tendencies to development. For, whenever 
any system of thought has the embracement of 
transcendentalism, it becomes, to some extent, a 
subject of feeling, and does not tend to produce 
that steady concentrated activity of the intellectual 
faculties, which those subjects do that are more 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION". 77 

properly adapted to their legitimate scope. But 
even in this phase of these doctrines they produced 
developments, which, like the metaphysical school 
after the revival of learning, although concentrated 
on things that by their method of treatment are 
beyond the proper province of reason, rendered the 
intellect quite subtile and critical. In proportion as 
these doctrines went beyond the legitimate scope of 
the intellectual powers, the activity of those faculties 
was diminished. Experience, in spite of the claims of 
the psychological school, has positively taught, that 
subjects adapted to the development of the intellect 
must be of the nature of finite abjectivity. For how is 
it possible for finite mind to comprehend conditions of 
the infinite? to pass from the facts and principles of 
the terminational to the relative attributes of the 
interminable without the assistance of a theurgy V^ 
It was in this manner that these doctrines diminished 
their influence on this portion of the mind. They did 
not reach this state, however, until the feelings of 



r8 - It . the business of human intellect to adapt itself to the realities of 
things^ and not to measure those realities by its own capacities of compre- 
hension. The same qualities which fit mankind for the oflQces and purposes 
of their own little life, the tendency of their belief to follow their own experi- 
enoe, incapacitates them for judging what lies beyond. Not only what man can 
know, but what he can conceive, depends upon what he has experienced. 
Whatever forms a part of his experience, forms a part also of his conception, 
and appears to him universal and necessary, though really, for aught he 
knows, having no existence beyond certain narrow limits."— John Stuart 
Mxu.'B Logic, 338. 



78 IIISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

morality and of religion in the educated were com- 
paratively expunged. 

The duration of the Atomistic philosophy was not 
far from the same length of time as that of the Eleatic. 
It was more of a system of natural philosopy, and 
toward its close denied all but the operation of the 
natural laws. The combination of certain properties 
of matter, through the action of an universal principle, 
generated life and organization. From the time of its 
rise to the expulsion of Anaxagoras it had done much 
for the intellectual powers, but nothing for the moral. 
While the former were thus forced forward in devel- 
opment by activity, the latter, by non-use, were forced 
to diminish. They had, during the whole period 
which this system existed as a practical instructor, 
continued to decrease till moral qualities formed no 
part of the character of the educated classes. As the 
intellect is not possessed of feeling, and as there was 
a deposition of the moral and of the religious faculties, 
as also there were no other faculties but the animal 
which were possessed of feeling, after the fall of the 
two former, the propensities were left in control of 
the mind. History does not instruct us that the 
uneducated were thus circumstanced ; but, on the 
contrary, there is every reason to believe, from the 
same records which condemn the higher, that the 
lower were in a more moral state, more approaching 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 79 

a primitive normality, having not been subjected so 
much to the deleterious influences of external phe- 
nomena and the detractive tendencies of philosophy. 
From this distance of time, it is impossible to 
determine with certainty, if Anaxagoras' expulsion 
were caused by the special enmity of the people in 
consequence of his negation of deity, or the immediate 
result of a conspiracy of corrupt aspirants for power, 
who wished to attack all that were connected with 
Pericles, for the purpose of bringing the latter into 
contempt with the people and thereby force him from 
the head of affairs. ^ ® However this may be, the ostra- 
cism of Anaxagoras put an end to his system of 
philosophy and consequently the intellectual culture 
flowing from it. Although his doctrines survived 
him, instruction under them, after his death and 
during the Peloponnesian war, came to an end. 
Those doctrines existed, but during the Peloponne- 
sian controversy they slumbered in the minds of 
corrupt politicians, who had endorsed the general 
scepticism of Anaxagoras, without preserving his vir- 
tues or (^.ven imitating his manners. Although the 

19 "According to some authors, he was tried and condemned either to a 
fine and banishment or to death ; but in the latter case ho made his escape 
from prison. According to others, he was defended by Pericles and acquitted- 
Plutarch says that Pericles, fearing the event of a trial, induced Anaxagoras 
to withdraw from Athens; and it seems to have been admitted on all h^.nds 
that he ended his life in quiet and honor at Lampsacus"—TniKLW all's 
HisTOHY OF Greece, vol. 1, page 321 ; also note 24, on page 56 of same volume; 
ScHwiaLBB's History of Philosophy, page 40. 



80 niSTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

moral character of this distinguished philosopher was 
not only above reproach but admirable, the infidelity 
of his teachings removed all fears of retributive justice 
in another world. During the first half of the time in 
which this philosophy was engaged in the cultivation 
of the intellectual powers, it produced a direct depres- 
sion of moral activity. During the last half of its 
term of life, although its speculative negation of 
theogony and preternatural accountability could 
work little injury to rigid moral organizations, it 
was ruinous to those who were equally disposed to 
vice and to virtue, into either one of which they were 
drawn by external conditions. 

The greater part of mankind then, most especially 
the educated Greeks, as the race of man has ever been 
since, were weaker in their moral than intellectual 
powers, and their attitude was determined invariably 
by surrounding circumstances. To this generally 
there is an universal admission. When, therefore, 
the majority of any particular class, or the majority 
of a nation, bear such relation to the minority and 
also to themselves, there be no rigid system of moral 
culture, and if, also, there be no fear of future punish- 
mient, there will, in that majority, be an abandonment 
of justice, and an embracement of those national poli- 
tics which extend to them the greatest latitude of 
depravation. Although the inculcation of religious 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 81 

punitive precepts does not educate the moral sense, 
it does, nevertheless, to some extent repress, through 
fear, the criminal conduct of a greater share of the 
human race. The one or the other must, therefore, 
exist for the welfare of mankind. If both cease, 
anarchy must result. The subjective method of the 
Anaxagorean system, although more critical in tend- 
ency than original in thought, produced wonders on 
the intellectual powers of the Greeks. 

What has been said of the Atomistic may, regard- 
ing the effect upon the moral, be said of every other 
school of Greece down to the establishment of the 
Socratic philosophy. They cultivated the intellectual 
and them only. We have already seen that but few 
of the inhabitants of this nation were educated — the 
ruling classes — and we shall hereafter more clearly 
discover, as we have in part already, that they were 
the only portion of the Greeks which can be charged 
with any considerable degree of corruption. 

About nineteen years before the close of the Pelo- 
ponnesian war, there appeared at Athens a person of 
no very remarkable exterior, who was represented as 
bowed by age and disfigured by a few of those phys- 
ical infirmities, which have, in all ages, more or less, 
effected an abasement in the external proportions of the 
individual members of mankind. His physiognomy 
was anything but prepossessing; yet within there was 

6 



82 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

a subtile intellect accompanied by a soul stamped with 
every element of mortal greatness, which shed brilliant 
rays of glory on those days of Grecian degeneracy. 
Although his magnificent virtues and principles have 
been the theme of bards and historians, few have fully 
appreciated the real worth of the doctrines of this 
most excellent philosopher. Amidst those lamentable 
times which had fallen on the more unfortunate 
inhabitants of Greece, wherein money was mammon, 
ostracism or murder, seemingly became a necessity 
for public notoriety and political success, it would 
appear, if one be inclined to believe in special inter- 
ventions of a superintending Providence, a being was 
let down to this lower world from above, who was, in 
almost every respect, competent to arrest the people 
from that extinction, into which, by the educated 
classes, they were being hurried. The name of Soc- 
rates has long been familiar to the world. 

The schools of thought which preceded and were 
contemporary with the Socratic, only sought discov- 
eries which satisfied the curiosities of the mind, but 
added nothing to the welfare and moral stability of 
nations in this age of the world. The constant being 
of the Eleatic, the becoming of the Heraclitic, the 
doctrines of the Atomistic, and the very critical tend- 
ency of the Pyrrhonic, were addressed exclusively 
to the intellect, no wise causing action or humane 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 83 

interest in the feelings of the student. Thus while the 
intellectual faculties were vigorously exercised on sub- 
jects which were partially and wholly adapted to their 
operation, excluding the sympathetic exertion of every 
other faculty, the moral and the religious sentiments 
were consigned to repose, to atrophy, and to extinction. 
But after the rise of the Socratic, there was manifestly 
a new direction given to thought, and a more beneficial 
epoch for human investigation came into being, ^ ° The 
most important fault, which it possessed, was the 
tardiness of its appearance. It came when virtue was 
fallen, when the vices of rival states had generated 
war for conquest and subjection ; too late to accomplish 
the moral regeneration of Greece. And herein lay the 
principal cause of its failure, for had Socrates founded 
his system one hundred years earlier, the fate of 
Grecian freedom, if not independence, would have, 
in all probability, been entirely different. 

No man before him had attempted a thorough 

so "Socrates gave a new direction to pliilosophical investigation. He 
united vrith a penetrating judgment a liberal mind and exalted views, exem- 
plary integrity and purity of manners." * * * " He estimated the value of 
knowledge by its utility ; and recommended the studj' of astronomy, geometry 
and other sciences only as far as they admit of practical application to the 
purposes of human life. His great object was to lead men into an acquaint- 
ance with themselves, to convince them of their follies and vices, to inspire 
them with the love of virtue, and to furnish them with useful moral instruc- 
tion. He thought it more reasonable to examine things in relation to man 
and the principles of his moral conduct, than such as lie beyond the sphere 
and reach of human intellect, and consequently do not relate to man. His 
favorite maxim was : whatever is above us, does not concern us." — Doctrine 
OF THE Mental. Phenomena, by J. G. Spukzheim, pages 11 and 12. See also 
pages 54-5 of Schwegler's History of Philosophy. 



84 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

education of the moral faculties so as to give them 
control over human conduct ; no man before him had 
endeavored to arrest the wandering thoughts of man- 
kind after momentary pleasure and bring them back 
to those laws which alone can confer lasting happiness ; 
no man before him had tried to point out the true 
foundations of equitable governments ; no man before 
him had, by system, disconnected the religious from 
the moral elements of the mind, and successfully 
shown that upon the latter alone can securely rest the 
just constitutionalities of mortal administrations. 

One cannot but dwell with pleasure on the charac- 
ter of the Socratic philosophy, because it was about 
the only thing that enlivened the hopes and gladdened 
the heart of the good in- this stagnant period of 
Grecian history, when everything was expediency 
and policy in the educated classes, and honesty was 
winked at as a foolish relic of barbaric times, or as an 
invention of the weak and crafty to deceive and delude 
the ignorant. A war, ruinous alike to Athens and to 
Lacedffimon, had been in progress, shedding the blood 
of relatives and friends, now turned to relentless foes, 
for eight long years, each one of which was significant 
ol the decline of the fortitude and integrity that once 
actuated this valorous and austere race of men. All 
the rest of Greece, as dependants, were drawn into the 
alliance of the one or the other of these powerful 



GENEKAL I INTRODUCTION. 85 

states, wherein tlie victory or the defeat, to either, 
was equally an annihilation of liberty to all. It 
resulted in an aristocratic ascendency of corrupt 
demagogues over democratic rights, wherein of the 
former all are unequally privileged before the law. 
This prepared the way for the machinations of a 
Philip, of an Alexander, who shortly after the sub- 
jection of Athens, began to inflict mankind by the 
commission of the most heinous crimes conceivable 
under man's moral code. 

The nature and tendency of the Socratic philosophy 
was to do away and supersede those idle speculations," 
which, did no positive good, other than cultivate the 
intellectaal powers and partially satisfy the curiosity 
of enquiring minds ; and, as has been seen, the teach- 
ings of the pre- Socratic systems blasted all consolatory 
hopes, and extinguished all fear, of a future life. And 
although it may with truth be said, that they removed 
ignorance and extreme superstition from the minds of 
the people, by a systematic destruction of Polytheism, 
and thus prepared the way in the spiritual faculties 
of mental being for the reception of a very limited 

21 " Observing with regret that the opinions of the Athenians were misled 
and their moral principles corrupted, by philosophers who spent their time 
in refined speculations upon the nature and origin of things, and by Sophists 
who taught the art of false eloquence and deceitful reasonings, Socrates 
endeavored to institute a new and more useful method of instruction. He 
conceived that the true end of philosophy is not an ostentatious display of 
superior learning, neither ingenious conjectures, nor subtle disputations, 
but the love of truth and virtue."— Spukzheim's Mentai^ Phenomena, p. 11. 



86 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Monotheism, they finally passed to the extreme, 
toward their close, and endorsed Atheism. When 
they had reached this condition, they assumed an 
entirely different characteristic, and the good which 
they had formerly done was more than counterbal- 
anced by such a decrement of morals, as was in few 
places to be found on the face of the earth. This 
condition was wrought by the great concentration 
of the intellectual faculties upon the absurdities of 
ancient religion and the origin of all things. 

It must be borne in memory, that these philosophies 
were made the subject of investigation by the rich and 
a paucity of the poor only. A very few in those days, 
as in the present, were sufficiently industrious to forego 
ease and pleasure, and confine themselves to the study 
of abstract principles. This is as nearly true of learn- 
ing as philosophy. Such has been the case in all ages, 
and there will always be more inclination to ease than 
to energy. 

The philosopical speculations of Socrates were 
directed to the ethical portion of man's metaphysical 
being. He conceived that the first essential requisite 
to individuals, to society, and to governments, was an 
establishment of moral principles by a system of rigid 
culture of man's moral nature. This alone could 
confer upon man lasting happiness, and secure to 
persons in relation to others, and to the state, perfect 



GENERAL INTEODXTCTION. 87 

productive harmony. This he attempted by subordi- 
nating mentality to that portion of itself which gives 
rise to qualities of moral principles, and thereby 
approximating to a correct system of ethics. This 
tended to destroy crimes and wars by removing the 
causes of their existence. 

It was the idle speculations of the pre-Socratic 
schools that had accumulated, as time advanced, upon 
the intellect of the Greeks, increasing its development, 
while the moral elements were wholly abandoned, 
and, by this doomed to a sickly existence, or a total 
extinction. It is a universal law of man's physical 
being, that organs of whatever nature, whether fibrous, 
nervous, or of any other material quality, by their 
inherent constitution require exercise. The penalty is 
a dying, or an atrophying condition to the organ so 
violating the laws of its being. And hence a single 
muscle, an entire arm or limb, perishes for want of 
exercise. This law was well understood by the Greeks, 
knowing also that it was as applicable to the meta- 
physical. And thus, as observed, the intellect grew 
to prodigious power by its constant activity, while the 
moral elements were silently and rapidly disappearing 
through neglect, from their just and proper influence 
in the minds of the educated classes. This course of 
the pre-Socratic philosophies, was a generation of 
power in one part of Grecian mentality, while it was a 



88 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

degeneration of the other ; life to the former, but death 
to the latter. So long had this been the condition in 
Greece, that the whole educated classes were very 
corrupt in their character, except now and then an able 
leader, who in order to obtain patronage and celebrity 
to his system of instruction, had found it necessary to 
unite with himself a pure bearing and exalted virtues. 

Such had become the moral qualities of this portion 
of the Grecian inhabitants before the Socratic establish- 
ment ; and when Socrates began teaching his method, 
the learned were justly chargeable of possessing the 
basest turpitude and of committing the grossest crimes 
ever before known to the people of Greece. Although 
other causes combined in producing this abandoned 
status, the defective system of education of these 
schools were the major and more legitimate cause of 
it. Although Socrates did not trace these effects to 
their sources, he readily discovered the only method, 
or means, by which his country could hope to 
escape those calamities, which were then upon a part 
of her citizens and portended the immediate burial of 
her fame, her glory, and the personal freedom of her 
people. 

The politicians of either aristocratic or democratic 
parties, who had been pupils of these ancient philos- 
ophies after they had attained to political eminence, 
misled the masses in the assemblies and courts. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 89 

trampling upon the most sacred rights of the people. 
Our distinguished philosopher, however defective his 
metaphysical speculations may have been, by the 
institution of virtue as a positive opposition to the 
subordination of the whole being to the propensities, 
endeavored to stay the corrupting causes which were 
then producing fatal effects to the Hellenic states, by 
afflicting them with suicidal wars. 

This opposition of Socrates to the peculations and 
profligate manners of the learned, soon drew upon 
him their anger, and they firmly resolved upon his 
removal. In order to effect their object, they resorted 
to the artifice of deception, causing the innocent mul- 
titude to believe that he was guilty, as a citizen, not 
only of disregarding the usages of state religion, but 
of positive crimes against the perpetuity of the com- 
monwealth. Accordingly he was accused of such 
things as gave apparent grounds of offending the 
people, by transgressing the laws and customs of the 
state of Attica. He was charged, among other 
things, all equally false, of introducing strange gods, 
of corrupting the youth, and upon these frivolous 
complaints was brought to trial and condemnation. ^ ^ 



22 "The accusation of Socrates, which took place in the year 399 B. C, 
(01.95.1.) not long after the expulsion of the thirty tyrants, and which was 
brought forward by Meletus, and supported by Arytas, the democratic 
politician, and Lycon, the orator, contained substantially the same charges 
which Aristophanes had made in the 'clouds.' It ran thus: 'Socrates is a 
public offender, in that he does not recognize the gods which the state 



90 HISTORY OF TUE DECLENSION. 

After tliirty days he died of poison, administered by 
authority of law.^^ 

Such were the prevailing characters of the times at 
this great center of culture, that this celebrated man, 
who having used the best part of his life, after the 
maturity of his mind, in doing good to his people 
and country, was put to death through the machina- 
tions of a few dissolute politicians and venal judges. 
Although the thirty tyrants, with their adherents, had 
been driven from authority, the former either banished 
or executed, it would appear that the corrupt which 
still remained were seething in decomposition, and, if 
allowed the expression, their moral faculties so far 
diminished as to be beyond the hope of the most 
distant redemption, almost extinguished from being. 
Athens was a first class asylum for the depraved, but 
a forbidding one to those who combined moral with 
intellectual qualities. 

It can nowhere be charged, to extent worthy of 
mention, upon the uneducated ranks of the Greeks, 



recognizes, but introduces new demoniacal beings; he has also offended by- 
corrupting the youth.'"— History of Philosophy, Uerberaez, vol 1, 81. 

23 " The execution of the sentence of Socrates was delayed by the 
departure of the Theoris, the sacred vessel, which carried the yearly offer- 
ings of the Athenians to Delos. From the moment that the priests of Apollo 
had crowned its stern with laurel, until its return, the law required that the 
city should be kept pure from all pollution, and, therefore, that no criminal 
should be put to death. The opening ceremony had taken place on the day 
before the trial of Socrates, and thirty days elapsed before the Th«oris again 
sailed into Piraeus."— Thirlwau^'s Hisioby Off Gbbboe, vol.1, page 526, 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 91 

that they were guilty of any connection with the com- 
mission of those crimes which were so frequent after 
philosophy had become established as a system of 
culture, other than an occasional excited movement 
against some celebrated individual, who, as they had 
been deluded into the belief by the orators of Attica, 
was about to overturn the liberty of the state, or 
likely, by his general infidelity to the religion of the 
country, to bring upon the people the vengeance of 
the gods for the desecration of their sacred laws. In 
almost every instance of the kind, the populace had 
been harangued by some ingenious demagogue, who 
was prepared and supported by a few facts, usually 
more apparent than real, which were in most cases 
wholly false. Such was the condition of affairs in 
the case of Aristides, who, because he had prevented 
this corrupt class from robbing the treasury, was 
ostracised from Athens with no little disgrace in the 
eyes of the inhabitants. 2* The lower orders voted 
against him in the trial which determined his expul- 
sion, througli the fear which they entertained of his 
erecting a strong centralized government upon the 
ruins of democratic laws. This was brought about 
by the educated rascality of Grreece. 

There is another source through which intelligence 



24 Consult the Rise and Fall of Athens, in which Mr. Bulwer has given 
this subject careful attention, vol. 2, page 45. 



92 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

may be derived to quicken, to some extent, the intel- 
lectuality of mankind. This may be wrought in two 
different ways : by reading the written productions of 
distinguished travelers, or by an actual intercommu- 
nication with the different nations of the earth. The 
former is less effectual than the latter, as a cause, 
producing, or as it were, creating, intelligence. Either 
may be made a poor substitute for an inferior kind of 
learning. It does not really produce a culture that 
very much strengthens the intellectual faculties ; it 
only enlivens the mind, stores the memory, and gives 
one an understanding of the customs, manners, laws, 
religions, and, to a limited degree, an insight into the 
private character of the different races of the globe. 
If the array of all the different tribes and races of 
mankind, with an exhibition of these phases, could 
pass in review before our eyes at some fixed place and 
time, it would not, I apprehend, have the effect on our 
intellectual being, that it would if we should visit the 
countries wherein those tribes and races are located in 
succession, allowing time to intervene for retrospection. 
This contemplation of different races of men, including 
their habits, acts as an education to the perceptive, or 
sensuous, faculties of merchant men resident and doing 
business in cities of commercial note, to which resort 
the traders of different parts of the world. When, 
therefore, we add to the last of the above ideas the 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 93 

sprightly operation of those faculties which discrim- 
inate between the various qualities of material objects, 
their value, vendition, and all those dependent calcu- 
lations necessary to be made in a complicated trade, 
we derive a compound discipline to those intellectual 
faculties which are peculiarly adapted to this kind of 
business. "We then have culture extended to other 
faculties, which extended culture, by its component 
character, multiplies the intelligence and therefore 
the mental capacity of the individual. 

Although Athens was the principal seat of phi- 
losophy and of learning, it was also among the most 
important commercial cities then in existence. Situated 
upon the confines of Europe and Asia, it communi- 
cated in its mercantile transactions with the eastern, 
and the more civilized portion of the western, world. 
Those men, who were desirous of studying the sciences 
and philosophy, flocked to Athens, where they received 
instruction from the latest and most improved schools. 
All sorts of goods, which were used by civilized 
people, were transported from Spain, from Carthage, 
and from Sicily, to modern Tyre and Athens, in which 
they found a ready sale, or an equivalent exchange for 
things equally valuable to the foreign merchant. These 
cities were to the traveler in commerce, what Mecca, in 
religion, afterward was to the Mahometan pilgrim. 
In them was collected by degrees great wealth. As 



94 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the merchant became rich, he lived luxuriously, and 
attempted to imitate the manners of his superiors, 
who had been subjected to rigid culture, and, besides, 
possessed of noble qualities, which, when combined in 
one individual, generally produces a mien far above 
that of ordinary mortals. We may, therefore, conclude 
that Athens, possessing other sources from which was 
generated intelligence, had intelligent people beside 
those of education. But the proportion which this 
class of men bore to the state was very narrow. 

In the foregoing we have established the sources 
from which the states of Greece derived most all of 
that intelligence of which they were possessed. !N'o 
other portion of Greece offered those advantages which 
this great city presented to her race far and near. The 
opportunities of acquiring learning, of commercial 
knowledge, and those degenerating vices, idleness and 
luxury, were in the keeping of this great city. It now 
remains for us to set forth the character, the moral 
condition, of her public or educated men. ^ " 

As the histories of the ancients are little more than 
the chronicles of the martial acts of distinguished 
men, it is a severe labor for him who endeavors to 



25 "History is rarely more than the biography of great men. Through 
a succession of individuals we trace the character and destiny of nations. 
The people glide away from us, a sublime but intangible abstraction, and 
the voice of the mighty Agora reaches us only through the medium of its 
representatives to posterity."— Rise and Fau. of Athens, vol. 2, page 9. 



GENERAL INTRODTJCTIOlSr 95 

nnfold the moral civilization of any given race of 
antique times, to discover the causes of certain effects, 
and thereby understand partly those laws which gov- 
ern the mentality of man. The course of ancient 
writers multiplies the labor of the modern investi- 
gator, and in consequence of this we are compelled 
to be more diffusive to attain our object. The phrenic 
condition of any nation can be tolerably well under- 
stood, if it have credible biographers. "In regarding 
the character of men thus concentrating upon them- 
selves our survey of a nation, it is our duty sedulously 
to discriminate between their qualities and their deeds: 
for it seldom happens that their renown in life was 
unattended with reverses equally signal, that the 
popularity of to-day was not followed by the perse- 
cutions of to-morrow; and in these vicissitudes our 
justice is no less appealed to than our pity, and we 
are called upon to decide, as judges, a grave and 
solemn cause between the silence of a departing 
people and the eloquence of imperishable names." 

The condition of Athens just before its fall corre- 
sponded in many respects, to the revolutionary 
sentiments which decided the fate of the unfortunate 
Louis XVI, the last regal representative who united 
in one person the Capetian and Bourbon dynasties. 
It will be suflacient for our purpose to trace the 
career, rise and fall of those distinguished persons 



96 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

in whom originated all the principal events, and who 
possessed nearly all the intelligence of these ancient 
states on the eve which preceded their overthrow. 
And also, as we wish to consider the civilization of 
this people in contemporaneousness with Carthage, 
it is unnecessary to embrace a longer period than 
that which included those days that were at once 
her worst and her last. 

It is impossible at any epoch, however mortifying 
to reflect upon, that does not, during its wide-spread 
pestilence of vices, produce individuals who enlist our 
warmest sympathies and admiration. But for this 
our contemplation would be attended with the most 
sorrowful reflections, often generating the condition of 
misanthropy. If intellectual culture operates as an 
elevation of man's moral nature, then those individu- 
als who have been educated, when entrusted with a 
nation's independence and the execution of its laws, 
ought to exhibit a fidelity to the state, and a corre- 
sponding equity in their relations with the people. 
But there never was a people who placed greater 
confidence in the integrity of their educated classes 
than did the lower orders of Grreece; and yet never 
were betrayals so signal as those to which the con- 
stituency of Attica were subjected, on the eve, during 
the progress and at the close, of the Peloponnesian war. 
Those men, who had received the best educations, and 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 97 

possessed by nature of large intellectual faculties, were 
those who betrayed the state, robbed the treasury, 
murdered their constituents, bankrupted the republic, 
and brought on a war which ended in the dependency 
of Attica and the enthrallment of all Greece. 

We have seen that those philosophies which had 
their birth and decay before the Peloponnesian strug- 
gle, had a strong and peculiar tendency to expunge 
the moral qualities of human nature from influen- 
tial action on the votaries of their doctrines. They 
brought the educated into that condition of debauchery 
of which we do not find them possessed before ^the 
publication of philosophy. 

After the tyrannical government of Hippias was 
overthrown and he was driven into exile, a strife 
began between the nobles and the people, as to the 
form of government that should be established in' 
place of that despotism which had already fallen ^ » 
The aristocracy had opposed the rule of the tyrant, 
not in consequence of the oppression which monarch- ' 
ical systems entail on the people, but apparently 
because they held a subordinate position. ^^ In the 
destruction of the preceding form of government, they 



26 "The Instaut the pressure of one supreme power was removed, the two 
parties, embodying the aristocratic and popular principles, rose into active 
life."— Rise and Fall op Athens, vol. 1, page 231. 

27 In modern times there have been modifications by which the crown 
divides its power with the nobles, both figainst the people. 

7 



98 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

were actuated by the feelings of envy and an ego- 
tistic ambition for political notoriety, irrespective of 
the welfare of the people, ^s In the struggle which 
ensued over the remains of monarchical administra- 
tration, there occurred scenes which disgrace the 
records of Grecian history. They struggled not for 
the people in reality, but for themselves in the end, 
each to attain exclusively to that power from which 
he had assisted in hurling the tyrant a short time 
before. Like the French nobles, on the eve of the 
French revolution, each was restless and impatient 
at the claim of any other to superior descent. All 
traced their descent either from the gods or from 
ancient celebrated heroes. As if the world were 
made for panoramic shows, these individuals must 
make an ostentatious exhibition of inordinate vanity 
and conceit. What has mortal to be proud of, if 
it be not that honesty and fidelity with which he 
complies with those laws of nature which God has 
established for man's benefit. The enfeebled aristoc- 
racies of most all countries, down to the end of the 
reign of Louis XV, have presented this phase of folly. 
The nobles of Athens could not brook a superior, 
and consequently joined in the expulsion of a tyrant. 
They, therefore, were in favor of a more liberal or a 

aS EiSB AND Fat J. 07 Athsns, vol, 1, pages 231-32. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 99 

more oppressive form of government. If the nobles 
conld not rule, they must not be ruled. If the form 
of government was to be that of a democracy, in which 
the sovereign power was the will of the people, the 
administration of the laws must rest lightly and make 
very few demands upon them. They had descended 
lineally from illustrious parents, had been richer, 
better educated, better fed and clothed than the rest 
of the people, and hence were in the possession of 
better blood, more beauteous bodies, and minds organ- 
ized on a larger scale. These considerations appeared 
sufficiently satisfactory to the educated ranks which 
lived in Attica at this period. They were firm in the 
belief that their pretensions were not unreasonable, 
and, therefore, the people ought to forego those 
foolish notions which they entertained of comfort and 
convenience, and live to support the measures and 
adorn the administration of a legitimate descendant 
of a Hercules or a mighty Jove. If these were not the 
words in which the higher classes uttered their senti- 
ments, the record of their deeds confirm the substance 
which they contain. 

Miltiades claimed descent from the most illustrious 
families that preceded the time in which he lived, 
dwelling at Athens during the forepart of the reign 
of Pisistratus, about 550 B. C.^^ The restless and 

29 EiSH AND Fali. OB" Atilens, vol. 1, page 222. 



100 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

suspicious conduct of Miltiades occasioned anxiety 
on the part of Pisistratus for the security of his gov- 
ernment ; and the former, regarding his life, or at least 
his liberty, unsafe during the existence of the latter' s 
despotic rule, proceeded to the Chersonesus to found 
a colony, where he was finally assassinated. 

Pisistratus, from a democratic leader, although a 
noble by birth, wounded himself, thereby deceiving 
the people, although they had been warned by Solon 
of the delusion. At his request the inhabitants granted 
him a guard for his protection against the AlcmsBo- 
nidse, who, he pretended, threatened his life.^" As 
this guard at first was necessarily small, he secretly 
increased it to a commensuration with the dignity of 
the protected (under a hypocritical pretension), so as 
to secure protection to his person against the jealousy 
and hatred of a designing noble not less powerful than 
himself. Those sentiments of humanity, compassion 
and conscientiousness, have, at all historic times, been 
mostly in the keeping of the illiterate: they were, 
among the Grecians, the treasurers of both. This 
aspiring despot, in all probability, was well apprized 
of the locality in which these elements were reposed. 



30 " The credulous love of the people swept away all precautions, and the 
guard was granted. Its numbers did not lor t continue rtationary. Pisistratus 
increased the amount, till it was swelled to the force required by his designs. 
He seized the citadel, the antagonistic faction of Megacles fled— anc* Pisis- 
tratus was master of Athens."— Rise and 1'All of Athens, vol. 1, page 21b. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 101 

Destitnte of the feelings of either, he did not hesitate 
to trample on these beautiful sentiments in others; 
and the guards assigned for his protection were the 
means by which he subverted the liberty of that very 
people, who had thrown an arm of security around his 
person, or his life. He established an absolute govern- 
ment in Athens, and thenceforth he designed that all 
law, together with its execution, should proceed from 
himself. He became the great fountain of justice, 
instead of the people. During his administration there 
were but two ranks in the state, the oppressor and the 
oppressed ; he was master and they were slaves. 

The Alcmseonidse, guilty of murder, fled not from 
Athens to avoid the just vengeance of law, but through 
fear of the machinations of a rival usurper. Megacles 
and his associates, belonging to the popular party, 
took refuge in a foreign country. But powerful rival 
parties, under the leadership of Lycurgus, were suc- 
cessful in driving the despot from the state. This 
union of opposing rivals for the removal of Pisistratus 
was, after the expulsion of the latter, dissolved by 
jealousy among the rival leaders of each, at the 
aspiring ambition of the other. Against the rival 
leaders, Megacles, being unable to make headway, 
and establish himself in a centralized government, 
proposed to the exiled monarch, each having fled from 
the other, to elevate him to the despotic position from 



102 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

whicli lie had been driven, in the event that Pisistratus 
marry his daughter. Destitute of all shame in this 
relation, as in all others, he acceded to the terms, thus 
prostituting his person for power by marrying the 
Megaclean.^* The parent, who was represented as a 
mild man and a leader of one of the democratic 
parties, proved to be the very individual who restored 
a tyrannical rule to the tyrant, and an oppressive 
burden to the people. 

But the want of affection toward Coesyra soon 
reached the ears of Megacles, who, regarding it a 
contempt of merit, or of dignity in his own person, 
resented the insult, became democratic in feeling, and 
a second time, by his influence, compelled the tyrant 
to descend the throne and flee the state. The usurper 
and his sons soon after established themselves in the 
government. Megacles and Pisistratus knew no rights 
but their own, and the bearings of no measures but 
such as contributed to their own riches, and to their 
own selfish ends. With them might made right, and 
each was desirous of placing all in subordination to his 
own interests. The sole end of life with them was the 
gratification of their selfish and animal desires. They 



31 " Megacles, therefore, unable to maintain equal ground with Lycurgus, 
turned his thoughts toward the enemy he had subdued, and sent proposals to 
Pisistratus, offering to unite their forces, and support him in his pretentions 
to the tyranny, upon condition that the exiled chief marry his daughter 
Coesyra. Pisistratus readily acceded to the terms." — Rise and FAiiL of 
Athsns, vol. 1, page 215. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 103 

racked Athens by civil wars to subserve the purposes 
of these base passions ; and whatever apparent fame 
their ambition might have attained in the eyes of the 
depraved, it is perfectly evident that their envious 
souls were put to the severest torture at the prosperity 
of political rivals, and their memory doomed to be 
branded with infamy by succeeding generations as 
traitors and felons. 

Some credit, however, is due Pisistratus, for, being 
a man of learning, he was the first who collected the 
scattered poems of Homer, ^ 2 enforced the laws of 
Solon, ^ ^ and directed the attention of his countrymen 
to the cultivation of letters. 

Miltiades, nephew to the one already mentioned, 
was both a tyrant and a traitor to the nobles and to 
the people. ^* He commanded the Greek forces at the 
celebrated battle of Marathon, and died in prison 



32 "Although the poems of Homer were widely known and deeply 
venerated before his time, yet he appears, by a more accurate collection and 
arrangement of them, and probably oy bringing them into more general and 
active circulation in Athens, to have largely added to the wonderful impetus 
to poetical emulation which these immortal writings were calculated to 
give."— Rise and Fall of Athens, vol. 1, page 318. 

33 "Amid the tumult of fierce and equipoised factions, it might be 
fortunate that a single individual was raised above the rest, who, having 
the wisdom to appreciate the institutions of Solon, had the authority to 
enforce them."— Ibid. vol. 1, 219. 

34 Mr. Bulwer says that this Miltiades arrived at the Chersonesus, " by a 
stroke of dextrous perfidy, seized the persons of the neighboring chieftains — 
attained the sovereignty of that peninsula, and married the daughter of a 
Thracian prince. In his character was united, with much of the intellect, all 
the duplicity of the Greek."- Ibid., vol. 1, page 258. 



104 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

under, as is believed, unjust sentence of law. After 
the death of Pisistratus, his eldest son, Hippias, suc- 
ceeded to the throne of his father It was during the 
reign of Hippias that this second Miltiades was sent 
to the Chersonesus, which Hippias supposed bore the 
relation of a tributary province to Athens, and there- 
fore to his sovereign power. Miltiades, after his arrival 
in the former country, pretended to be greatly afflicted 
for the loss of his kinsman. Upon the appearance of 
this, the most considerable persons on that peninsula 
offered every sympathy and satisfaction, which they 
could render to the sorrow-stricken chief. When those 
influential persons had assembled for that purpose, he 
laid hands on their persons and treated them as modern 
nations manage notorious thieves. There could be no 
baser conduct, or an exhibition of more treacherous 
principles, than the action of Miltiades in this affair. ^ ^ 
He was true in faith to no particular party, nor power, 
if he could, by any means, make an act of perfidy 
redound to his own emolument in wealth, in honor, 
or in fame. 

*' During the war between Darius and the Scythians, 
while affecting to follow the Persian army, he had held 
traitorous intercourse with the foe, and proposed to the 



35 " The new Miltiades was a man of consummate talents, but one who 
scrupled little as to the means by which he accomplished his object."— 
Rise and Fauj of Athsns, pa^e 2S8. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTIOIT. 105 

Crrecian chiefs to destroy the bridge of boats across 
the Danube, confided to their charge; so that, what 
with the force of the Scythians and the pressure of 
famine, the army of Darius would have perished 
among the Scythian wastes, and a mighty enemy have 
been lost to Greece — a scheme that, but for its wicked- 
ness, would have been wise. With all his wiles, and 
all his dishonesty, Miltiades had the art, not only of 
rendering authority firm, but popular. Driven from 
his state by the Scythian nomades, he was voluntarily 
recalled by the very subjects over whom he had estab- 
lished an armed sovereignty — sl rare occurrence in that 
era of republics. Surrounded by fierce and restless 
foes, and exercised in constant, if petty, warfare, 
Miltiades had acquired as much the experience of 
camps as the subtilties of Grecian diplomacy; yet, 
like many of the wise of small states, he seems to 
have been more crafty than rash — the first for flight 
whenever flight was the better policy — but first for 
battle if battle were the more prudent. He had in him 
none of the inconsiderate enthusiasm of the hero, none 
of the blind but noble subserviency to honor. Valor 
seems to have been for his profound intellect but the 
summation of chances, and when we afterward find 
him the most daring soldier, it is only because he was 
the acutest calculator." ^s This was the true character 

36 Rise and Fm.i. o» Athens, vol. 1, pago 259. 



106 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of him who fought the great battle of Marathon by the 
introduction of a new mode of attack. Like the class 
to which he belonged, whose minds were always turned 
to policy and expediency, he held no true relation to 
the people. This, we shall show, in a subsequent part 
of this work, to be one of the causes which is now 
decomposing the principles upon which the constitu- 
tionality of the republic of the United States is reposed. 
To-day it is the life of society; and the duration of 
the republic may be determined by it ; for it is evident 
that as duplicity becomes common to the members of 
society in ordinary life, equity has subsided from the 
masses, and depravity become the prevailing fashion 
of the age. 

Cleomenes had reduced the spirit of revenge to a 
science, and, by the subtilty of his address, caused 
the deposition of Demaratus from the throne of 
Sparta. Demaratus, being more influenced by power 
and the prospect of distinction than the love of jus- 
tice, betrayed his country, taking revenge upon a 
whole people for injuries which he bad received by 
the deceptive policy of Cleomenes and Leotychides. 

Demaratus, in the former part of his life, had 
defeated the suit which Leotydiides was paying to 
a young lady and married her himself In conse- 
quence of this Leotychides readily joined in the con- 
spiracy of Cleomenes, and puolished the falsehood 



GENERAL INTEODUOTION. 107 

regarding the legitimacy of Demaratus' birth. Cleo- 
menes knew that the lower classes were as supersti- 
tions as they were ignorant, and hence would consult 
the divine authority with reference to the truth of 
the charge. By the assistance of a citizen of no less 
standing than his own, he was enabled to bribe the 
oracle to confirm the report. The consequence was 
that the people, (who if they must have a king desired 
one that had received from his ancestors no hered- 
itary tendency to vice,) deposed Demaratus from 
regal power. The fallen potentate, to escape the 
further persecution of his enemies, fled from Grecian 
authority, and was received at the Persian court by 
Darius. Shortly before him Hippias had been driven 
from a despotic station at Athens, the last sovereign of 
the Pisistratidse, by the envious and jealous rancor 
of political enemies who were his equals In wealth, in 
culture, and in sagacity. Hippias, repairing to the 
capital city of Darius, and pursuing that system of 
hatred and revenge so common to the higher classes 
of the Greeks, by his influence at the Persian court, 
drew upon the inhabitants of his native country the 
numberless hosts of its ancient enemies.^'' 



37 " While, seemingly unconscious of greater dangers, Athens thus prac- 
tised her rising energies against the little island of ^gina, thrice every day 
the servants of the Persian king continued to exclaim, 'Sire, remember the 
Athenians I ' The traitor Hippias, constantly about the person of the cour- 
teous monarch, never failed to stimulate still farther his vengeance by 



108 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

The donble attitude of Cleomenes toward the peo- 
ple in bribing the oracle, being discovered, he fled 
from the vengeance of the inhabitants and sought an 
asylum in a foreign state. Burning with indignation 
at the treatment he had received from his countrymen, 
he endeavored to direct the sword of Thessaly upon 
his native city. He was a man of great abilities and 
executiveness, and was enabled to accomplish more in 
a direct course than any other individual of his time. 
In consideration of the danger which at this time 
threatened Greece, the people, notwithstanding Cleo- 
menes' conduct in a foreign land, recalled him from 
exile. The Persian armies had appeared on the bor- 
ders of G-recian territory, and hence it demanded every 
effort on the part of the latter to protect itself from 
conquest and subjection to Persian rule. 

However defective may have been the character and 
conduct of Demaratus while he held the Spartan scep- 
ter, and also during the first part of his exile before the 
death of Darius, after the succession of Xerxes to the 
throne of Persia, and while the mighty armies of this 



appealing to his ambition. At length Darius resolved no longer to delay the 
accomplishment of his designs. He recalled Mardonius, whose energy, 
indeed, had not been proportioned to his powers, and appointed two other 
generals— Datis, a native of the warlike Media, and Aristophanes, his own 
nephew, son to the former satrap of that name. These were expressly 
ordered to march at once against Eretria and Athens. And Hipplas, 
now broken in frame, advanced in age, and after an exile of twenty years, 
accompanied the Persian army," expecting to be restored to the Attic 
throne.— RiSB and FaTiT. of Athens, vol. 1, page 265. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 109 

weak prince were being collected for the invasion of 
Ms native land, however destitute of Persian wealth 
and luxury, the deep and inherent love which he bore 
his country, notwithstanding his persecutions, over- 
came and conquered his vindictive spirit ; reversing his 
action, he became its friend, and once more experi- 
enced the tender and virtuous feelings of a patriot. It 
appears that when Xerxes called on him for his advice 
he presented the truth in such manner to deter, if it 
were possible, the king from pursuing the course 
which had been elected, and thereby arrest a calam- 
ity which, as it seemed to him, by the immense 
preparations, foreshadowed more the ruin of his 
country than of his enemies. The love he bore 
the former triumphed over the hatred he harbored 
against the latter. The nature of his whole conduct 
at the Persian court was designed to prepare his 
nation to avoid the blow aimed at its independent 
life. Although he had received every attention that 
was adapted in its nature to cause a forgetfulness of 
his exUe and diminish the love of his native land, he, 
nevertheless, remembered with endearment the home 
of his youth, his friends and the national civilisation 
to which he belonged. ^^ 



38 Rollin says " that this Demaratus was one of the two kings of Sparta, 
who, being exiled by the faction of his enemies, had talsen refuge at the 
Persian court, where he was entertained with the greatest marks of honor 
and beneficence. * * ♦ This prince was very much esteemed in Persia; 



110 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

From these facts, if we may believe the conclnsions 
of common sense, by the malicious conduct of the 
higher classes, Demaratus was driven into exile. At 
Sparta, as at Athens, it was dangerous for one person to 
unite in himself virtue and ability. By the defamation 
of such by the great, the ignorant were deceived and 
became dangerous enemies. Old Demaratus, who had 
all the former part of his Grecian life been surrounded 
by the corruption of his rank, and to considerable 
extent had imitated their vices, could not overcome 
the latent virtue of his nature, and he grieved as he 
beheld the ruin which threatened the land of his 
nativity. The active existence of his indignation, 
carried out by a spirit of revenge, showed that he 
was alternately swayed by virtue and by vice. His 
love of country was called into active life only when 
proper objective causes were presented to his reason. 

The character of Pausanias was as depraved as the 
position which he occupied was potential. After the 
relief which the united fleets of Athens and LacedsB- 
mon had rendered those cities which, during the 
invasion of Greece by Xerxes, had been reduced to his 



but neither the injustice of the Spartan citizens, nor the kind treatment of 
the Persian liiing, could make him forget his country. As soon as he knew 
that Xerxes was making preparations for the war, he found means to give 
the Grecians secret intelligence of it. And now, being obliged on this occa- 
sion to speak his sentiments, he did it with such a noble freedom and 
dignity as became a Spartan and a king of Sparta."— Ancient Histobt, 
vol. 1, page 253, Cincinnati edition. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. Ill 

domination, and their maritime armaments directed 
to the Hellespont, they took the city of Byzantium, in 
which were many families of the greatest influence in 
the empire of Persia. It was not here that Pausanias 
fell, but where he exhibited the evidences of a past 
fallen condition. The depravity into which this man 
had been lowered, previously to the taking of Byzan- 
tium, is almost past conception. Individuals do not, 
all at once, begin to fall and commit crimes in syn- 
chroniety. There is, first of all, a falling away of the 
humane sentiments, a gradual degeneration in the 
moral faculties of the mind, before individual action 
in the commission of wrong. Causes which, however 
little known to himself, had been in active oper- 
ation for a long time, destroying his moral nature. 
It is not here assumed that he received an average 
amount of this quality by hereditament. But there 
is as much reason to believe that he derived from 
this source as much as any other of his rank, in 
the absence of proof to the contrary. Like the mil- 
lions of to-day, who feed upon appearances rather 
than upon realities, Pausanias was seduced into the 
exhibition of his shallow condition by the gaudy 
appearances, the vain pretensions, and seemingly 
moral but profligate manners of these Persian fami- 
lies. Rich attire and external accomplishments in 
behavior, concealed the turpitude into which they 



112 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

had been bred or fallen after the period of adoles- 
cence. 

He designed first to bribe all the most influential 
persons that he could, money having been advanced 
for this purpose hy Xerxes. ^^ He also agreed to 
deliver the principal Greek cities into the hands of 
this potentate. Pausanias at the time was in com- 
mand of the Lacsedemonian fleet, and hence held a 
dangerous power from the people over them, and was, 
therefore, able to make the position of the Hellenists 
critical and uncertain in the extreme. He not only 
had the depravity to betray his country, but he and 
Artabazas both added murder to treason. In order to 
efiectuaUy conceal the traces of their conspiracy, each 
put to death the messengers sent by the other in his 
communication. * ° Pausanias had been twice arrested 
and acquitted on a charge of treason. 



39 " Pausanias, who from this time conceived thoughts of betraying his 
country, thought proper to make use of this opportunity to gain the favor of 
Xerxes. To this end he caused a report to be spread among his troops, that the 
Persian noblemen, whom he had committed to the guard and care of one of 
his officers, had made their escape by night and fled, whereas he had set them 
at liberty himself ; and sent a letter to Xerxes by them, wherein he offered to 
deliver the city of Sparta and all Greece into his hands, on condition he would 
give him his daughter in marriage. The king did not fail to give him a favor- 
able answer, and to send him very large sums of money also, in order to win 
over as many of the Grecians as should be disposed to enter into his designs. 
The person he appointed to manage this intrigue with him, was Artabazas ; 
and in order to enable him to transact the matter with the greater ease and 
security, he made him governor of all the sea-coasts of Asia Minor."— Roi> 
un's Ancient Histoky, vol. 1, page 268. 

40 "It must be observed, by the way, that this Persian governor and 
Pausanias had agreed together, immediately to put to death all the couriers 



GENERAL INTEODUOTION. 113 

It was Argillias, a slave of Pansanias, that fumislied 
sufficient evidence to convict the suspected, by putting 
into the hands of government officers the letter he was 
to have carried to the Persian satrap. To the crime of 
treason he coupled that of wholesale murder of his 
own people, to achieve the ends of a vaulting ambition. 
Pausanias was of royal blood, and had received the best 
education which was to be had in Greece. Both he and 
Artabazas, although men of brilliant minds quite up 
to if not beyond the civilization of the times, were not 
only destitute of principle, but guilty of the most 
revolting crimes. The horrid propositions which the 
former made to the latter were not only acceded to but 
executed to the letter. There is always a last act of 
felony in the criminal, and the crimes of which Pau- 
sanias was guilty were partly rewarded or punished 
by the death which followed a voluntary seclusion 
and starvation.** Although one may not be in favor 
of extreme punishment, yet he cannot but feel that 
there is scarcely a death so severe that such a life as 
his does not merit. 



they mutually sent to one another, as soon as their packets or messages were 
delivered, that there might be no traces left or possibility of discovering their 
correspondence. The Argillian. who «aw none o£ hJs fellow servants that had 
been sent, return back again, had some suspicions; and when it came to his 
turn to go, he opened the letter he was entrusted with, In which Artabazas 
was desired to kill him as soon as he had delivered it."— Eollin's Anoisnx 
History, vol. 1, page 269. 

41 "Pausanias concealed himself in the temple of Pallas, and there 
starred to death."— Ibid., vol. 1, page 269. 



114 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

The conduct of Themistocles, by his secret corre- 
spondence with Pansanias, seemed to implicate him in 
the conspiracy to subordinate all Greece to the sway 
of a corrupt descendant of Cyrus. He had no hope 
to escape in case of trial, so he fled to the court of 
Xerxes, and became governor of provinces to him 
who, by the conspiracy already mentioned, was to 
have been master of Greece. The exact relation 
Themistocles held to the intrigue, if any at all, has 
never been satisfactorily fathomed, probably never 
will be. As the beginning of the life of Themistocles, 
and his subsequent career, were worse than that of 
Pausanias toward the state, up to the time of the 
latter' s conspiracy, and as also virtue is not derived 
by the practice of evil, such being the life of Themis- 
tocles, there is little reason to believe that the end of 
his career was graced with more exalted principles. 
Crime increases individual depravity as age advances. . 

If Pausanias was unprincipled in ambition, Themis- 
tocles was not less so. If the former was a murderer, 
the latter was a thief; and both were traitors. As 
we, elsewhere, have seen, he caused the ostracism of 
Aristides, one of the most just of men, because the 
latter stood honestly in the way of the former's 
advancement to power. The latter kept the people 
of Athens constantly informed of their rights and the 
frauds practiced upon them by the public men of the 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 116 

state. Thus interfered with and checked by one as 
able as honest, they resolved to get rid of him, and 
hence the movement for his banishment. The public 
men of Attica and of all Greece were not only men of 
intelligence, but combined great mental strength with 
intellectual culture. The intelligent, who, as we have 
seen, and those whose careers will be hereafter noticed, 
were all, except now and then an individual, corrupt 
to the very verge of total depravity. 

In the ostracism of Cimon, in all probability, it was 
the banishment of one who was wholly guiltless of the 
crimes of which he was convicted. Very few were 
subjected to the ostracism, who were justly worthy 
of expulsion. It became rather a means to remove 
political rivals than a penalty for crimes, toward the 
end of the period which forever closed up republican 
freedom in Greece. Although the youth of Cimon 
was marked by irregularity, his after life was that of 
nobleness, and, to some extent, that of justice. *2 

Wherever charges are brought against persons, 
whether true or false, they furnish evidence of the 
character of the men of whom conviction is sought, or 



4a "Th»i6 himself gay and convivial, addicted to company, wine and 
women, he encouraged shows and spectacles ; he invested them with mag- 
niflcence."— Risk and Fall of Athens, vol. 8, 173. 

"The 111 reputation he had drawn upon himself having prejudiced the 
people against him, he at first was very ill received by them : when, being 
discouraged by repulse, he resolved to lay aside all thoughts of concerning 
himself with public business."— Anceknt Bistort, toL 1, page 276. 



116 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of the moral qualities of those making them. This may 
be considered as nearly true at all times among all 
mankind. And this we believe to be a good rule for the 
ascertainment of the moral condition of those in Hellas, 
who had not arrived by fortune at such a degree of 
political eminence as to hold the first positions of 
ofiicial stations, and, as a consequence, their conduct 
not so interwoven with the affairs of state as to make 
them necessary to be traced by historians when study- 
ing the history of a nation. This rule is true in its 
application, and cannot be dispensed with in contem- 
plating the social movements of mankind. This, 
among other methods, we have used in arriving at 
the moral condition of the higher classes. Contem- 
porary and subsequent historians record the crimes, 
and the character of the charges above mentioned, the 
nature of the times, the excitability of the lower 
ranks, and such surrounding circumstances as enable 
us, providing care and attention are used in the 
investigation, to contemplate the predominant traits 
of mentality in any given class. When Alcibiades was 
charged with disfiguring the statues of Mercury, at 
the time the fleet which he commanded was to have 
sailed for the coast of Sicily, may be regarded as 
evidence of the religious character of the people ; and 
as they looked to the gods for protection against 
calamities, and also their determination to punish 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. li? 

whoever should exhibit such a want of propriety as 
to insult them by defacing those things set up in their 
memory, produce proof of the integrity of the masses, 
so do they as positively establish, providing those 
charges were false, corruption as existing somewhere 
other than in the body of the people and in Alcibiades. 

As we are often met, in the recital of events by his- 
torians, with only the name, perhaps, of the arraigned, 
and none of those who moved his trial and condemna- 
tion, so when one, or two, or more individuals, having 
been so engaged, are known, there are many others 
who followed in supporting them in every measure, 
their equals in all but political fame, that are 
unknown. And thus, in the history of Greece, those 
who contributed directly to the movements against 
Aristides, Socrates, Alcibiades and others, were equal 
in intellectual culture to those whose names are known 
as leading conspirators against the corrupt and just, 
were far more numerous, with no less capacity in the 
distortion of facts and the production of false evidence. 

Alcibiades, in the seventeenth year of the Pelopon- 
nesian war, who, ostensibly at the head of the affairs 
of state in Attica, occupied a position which many of 
the learned desired, for themselves; they resolved 
upon his removal, if it involved his life in the fall. 
As much as they confided in the ignorant honesty 
of the masses, they, on the contrary, to effect his 



118 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

overthrow, had to rely on the utter abandonment of 
their colleagues. The simple honesty of the one and 
the abasement of the other were necessary conditions 
to effect their object. Through the ignorance of the 
masses, these political demagogues were enabled to 
impress upon their minds the belief that Alcibiades 
was about to overturn the existing republican insti- 
tutions and establish a despotic government. * ^ How- 
ever true this might have been prior to the preparation 
of the expedition for Sicily; however ambitious he 
might have been after regal honors, at the time of 
the defacement of the statues, the charge was, with- 
out the slightest doubt, wholly false, and only exhib- 
ited the turpitude of base and envious rivals. Yet 
the character of Alcibiades was marked by the 
greatest inconsistencies. He was licentious, conceited, 
vain,** tyrannical, overbearing and given to great 



43 "As " Alcibiades " was the mala obstacle to the advancement of their 
own popalarity and credit, they concluded that, in case they could rid them- 
selves of htm, they might at once become leaders of the state. Hence they 
aggravated the charge, and bellowed, that those mystic frolics and the 
defacement of the Mercuries, struck at the very foundation of democracy, 
and that none of those outrageous acts had been committed without his 
participation."— Smith's TiiANsr.ATio?f OF Thuctdides, page 228. 

44 "Nevertheless his high birth, his riches, the great families he was 
related to, and the authority of his guardian— all these things had conspired 
to make him exceedingly vain and haughty. He was full of esteem for him- 
self and contempt for all others. He was preparing to enter upon the 
administration of public affairs, and, from his conversation, it might be 
presumed that he promised himself no less than to eclipse entirely the glory 
of Pericles, and to attack the king of Persia upon his throne."— Bollim's 
Akcient Histobt, vol. 1, page 316. 



GENEBAL INTBODUOTION. 119 

drtmkeimess.*'*^ In spite of the eflEbrts of his great 
master, Socrates, he continually relapsed into debauch- 
ery of every nature. He completely defeated the peace 
which had been negotiated and ratified by and between 
the states of Attica and Sparta. The war had lasted ten 
years, well nigh exhausting the resources of the two 
states and their allies. But he designedly caused a 
renewal of hostilities, lasting seventeen years longer, 
ending in the subjection of republican institutions to 
aristocratic power. Alcibiades had no object in the 
continuation of hostilities, but to satisfy his ambition 
by parading his political and martial abilities before 
the inhabitants of Greece. 

When the ambassadors from Lacedsemon arrived 
at Athens, with full powers*^ to settle all differences 
existing between the belligerents, Alcibiades secretly 
represented to them that in the event of their making 
a statement to that effect before the people, the latter 
would become furious and resort to violence. They 



45 Rollin says of him that ho was liable to great extremes, either "an 
imperious master or a groveling slave ; a friend to virtue and to the virtuoiis, 
or abandoned to vice and to vicious men ; capable of supporting the most 
painful fatigues and toils, or insatiably desirous of voluptuous delights."— 
Ancient History, vol. 1, page 316. 

46 Nlcias had been opposed by Alcibiades in every effort to effect a 
settlement, "but happily for him, there arrived, at that very Instant, ambas- 
sadors from Lacedsemon, wno were invested with full powers to put an end 
to all disputes Being introduced into the council, or senate, they set forth 
their complaints, and made their demands, which every one of the members 
thought very just and reasonable. The people were to give them audience 
the next day."— Ibid. 



120 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

had previously said that fall powers of negotiation 
and ratification had been granted them by their gov- 
ernment. Were there no intervention, the people of 
both sections desired peace, war would cease, and the 
public occupation of vain politicians and warriors — 
these occupations in Greece were always united in 
one — would be brought to a close. It therefore became 
necessary for him, to be able to keep himself constantly 
before the public, to make some powerful interposition. 
He said, in the event of the ambassadors stating that 
they were not fully empowered, he would assist them, 
and thus avoid the violence of the multitude and effect 
their object. This he took a solemn oath to do. But 
the next day, at the convention, he purposely and 
premeditatedly committed the blackest perjury against 
the embassy and the state.*' 



47 "Acibiades, who wsis afraid they [the ambassadors] would succeed 
with them, used his utmost endeavors to engage the ambassadors [of Sparta] 
In a conference with him. Ho represented to them, that the council always 
behaved with the utmost moderation and humanity toward those who 
addressed them, but tho people wore haughty and extravagant in their pre- 
tensions ; that should thoy mention full powers, the people would not fail to 
take advantage of this cinMimstance, and oblige them to agree to whatever 
they should talce into their heads to ask. He concluded with assuring them, 
that he would assist them with all his credit, in order to get Pylua restored to 
them, to prevent the alliance with the people of Argos, and to get that with 
them renewed; and he confirmed all these promises with an oath. The 
ambassadors were extremely well pleased with this conference, and greatly 
admired the profound policy and vast abilities of Alcibiades, whom they 
looked upon as an extraordinary man; and, they were not mistaken in their 
conjecture. 

"On the morrow, the people being assembled, the ambassadors were 
Introduced. Alcibiades asked them, in mild terms, the subject of their 
emlMssy, and the purport of the powers with which they were Invested. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 121 

He caused the disastrous expedition to Sicily, was 
recalled and condemned to death. He avoided the 
extreme penalty of the law by making his escape to 
the kingdom of Sparta, where, by his artful accom- 
plishments in dissimulation, he contributed to the 
ruin of his country. 

But he did not long remain in Sparta, as he soon 
relapsed again into the habits of the voluptuary, and 
ruined the domestic happiness of king Agis ;*^ not 
only incurred the envy, but was hated and despised 
by all intelligent men of Sparta. They envied him 



They Immediately answered, that they were come to propose an accommo- 
dation, but were not empowered to conclude anything. The words were no 
sooner spoken, than Alcibiades exclaims against them ; declares them to be 
treacherous knaves ; calls on the council as witnesses to the speech they had 
made the night before; and desires the people not to believe or hear men 
who so impudently advanced falsehoods, and spoke and prevaricated so 
unaccountably, as to say one thing one day, and the very reverse on the next. 
" Words could never express the surprise and confusion with which the 
ambassadors were seized, who, gazing at one another, could not believe their 
eyes and ears. Nicias, who did not know the treacherous stratagem of Alci- 
biades, could not conceive the motive of this charge, tortured his brain to no 
purpose to find out the reason of it." The peace about to be concluded was 
entirely defeated by this bad faith of Alcibiades.— Rollins's Anciext His- 
TORT, vol. 1, page 316. 

48 " No reasons are assigned for the difference between Alcibiades and 
Agis. Numbers of probable ones might occur from the different tempers 
and manners of the persons : but we learn, from Plutarch, that Alcibiades 
had been intriguing with Timsea, the wife of Agis, and had had a son by her 
who was called Leotychides, disowned afterward by Agis, and incapacitated 
from succeeding to the throne. Alcibiades was always dissolute ; and yet 
this, it seems, was merely to gratify his pride, since he declared his intention 
in this intrigue, to have been that his descendants might reign at Sparta. 
This fine gentleman from Athens was exceedingly agreeable in the eyes of her 
Spartan majesty; even though his deportment at Sparta was such as if he 
had been trained from his birth in the severe discipline of Lycurgus. He was 
a thorough Spartan, shaved close, plunged into cold water, could make a meal 
on dry bread, and feast on black broth."— Thucydidks, lib. 8, page 299. Pmith. 



122 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

because he led the people captive ; they hated him for 
the same reason and those great abilities with which 
they could not hope to compete ; they despised him 
for his utter destitution of principle. Their compound 
hatred of his great and bad qualities, caused by his 
conduct among them, pronounced a second sentence 
of death against him. He fled from a people whose 
happiness he could not crush, from an educated class 
whom he could not trample under his feet. ^ " 

We have discovered that he rewarded the protectors 
of his life with the basest ingratitude. The difficulties 
which he had brought upon himself, he^ attempted to 
flee from, and took refuge at tJie court of Persia^ at 
which, like many of his evil-doing predecessors, He 
intrigued for his country's ruin. Seeing that iti utter 
extinction was about to be his handiwork*; that ho 
could not be commended except for evil by demons J.o 
the inhabitants of their abode ; that his 'final restora- 
tion to his native land, if at all, would bo rather a 



49 "In the meantime, several of Ionia declared for Lacedaemon, to which 
Alclbiades contributed very much, Agls, who was already his enemy in 
consequence of the injury he had received from him, could not endure the 
glory he had acquired ; for nothing was done without the advice of Alclbia- 
des, and It was generally said that the success of all enterprises was owing to 
him. The most powerful and ambitious of the Spartans, from the same 
sentiments of jealousy, looked upon him veith an evil eye, and at length, by 
their Intrigues, obliged the principal magistrate to send orders into Ionia for 
putting him to death. Alcibiades, being secretly apprized of this order, did 
not discontinue his services to the Lacedsemonians, but kept himself so well 
upon his guard, that he avoided all the snares laid for him."— Rollin's 
Anoiknt Histoby, vol. 1, page 334. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 123 

re-introdnction to tenantless villages, desolate fields, 
and desecrated grave-yards, his heart, under his selfish 
nature, repented, not for the many crimes which he 
had committed, but for the defeat, which was now 
apparent, to the darling objects of his ambition. 

The war in Sicily, in which he had involved the 
Athenians,'" had come to an end, and noble old 
Nicias, who had opposed it at its commencement, 
buried his bones in that distant island, in attempting 
to serve the vain glory of his country. Although 
Alcibiades had been the immediate cause of the war, 
he injured its interests, betrayed his companions in 
arms by treacherously inducing the allies of the Athe- 
nians to revolt, and intriguing an alliance of Italy, 
Lacedsemon, Syracuse, and the empire of Persia, 
against that little state of Attica, his birth-place, 
which had educated, and conferred honors upon him, 
in which also reposed the remains of his ancestors. 

At length the republican government fell before the 
unprincipled demagogues of Athens, ^ * and the army, 



50 "But the person who most influenced this ardor, [the conquest of 
Sicily,] was Alcibiades, by feeding the people with splendid hopes, with 
which he himself was forever filled or rather intoxicated."— Rollin's Ancient 
History, vol. 1, page 317. 

51 Rollin says that the corrupt politicians, after they had done away 
with the old political institutions of Athens, "elected new magistrates out of 
their own body, observing the usual ceremonies upon such occasions. They 
did not think proper to recall thoie who were banished, lest they should b« 
obliged to authorize the return of Alcibiades, of whose uncontrollable spirit 
they were apprehensive, and would soon have made himself master of the 



124 HISTORY OF THE DEOLENSIOl?. 

alarmed for those popular rights which had existed 
for a hundred years, recalled him, and raised him 
once more to the command of the Attic forces. ^ * He 
immediately accepted the chieftaincy of that army to 
which he was in hostile attitude, entirely reversing 
his political position, and those, who an hour before 
were his friends, engaged in a common cause, were 
now become his foes. He could not, however, undo 
his greatest work of treason ; his country was sinking 
beneath the blows of the civilized world, its liberty, 
its independence, as well as those of all Greece, were 
almost in effectual destruction. 

He had no feelings of compassion, as his acts prove 
too clearly he cared not what sufferings he inflicted on 
the innocent, the helpless; he had no conscience, as 
he did not respect the rights of others ; all interests, 
all law, whether human or divine, were subordinated 
to his selfish ambition. His moral and religious 
natures, as well as the honor of a respectable man- 
hood, were in the service of his sensual appetites. He 



people. Abusing their power in a tyrannical manner, some were put *o death 
ottiers they banislied, confiscating their lands with impunity. Ail who ven- 
tured to oppose this change, or even to complain of it, were butchered 
upon false pretexts; and those would have met with a bad reception, who 
demanded justice of the murderers. The four liundred, soon after their 
establishment, sent ten deputies to Samos to gain the concurrence of the 
army."— Rollin's Ancient History, page 336. 

53 "All that had passed at Athens was already known there," LSamos,! 
"and the news had enraged the soldie- j to the highest degree. They drnosed 
several of their chiefs, whom they suspected, and put others into their places, 
Alcibiades was recalled, and chosen generalissimo."— Ibu>. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 125 

was an inebriate, a libertine, a perjnrer, a ti'aitor, and 
a murderer. 

Alcibiades was among the most able political minds 
that Greece ever produced ; he had been educated in 
the most recondite branches of learning, under the 
tuition of the ablest masters. According to the pre- 
vailing theory, his moral qualities should have been 
as much exalted as his education was superior to that 
of ordinary mortals. But, by the guidance of observ- 
ation, very few persons, on the contrary, in the whole 
history of Greece, could be found more degraded in 
their moral nature. Education did nothing to elevate 
hifli in virtue, but it is perfectly evident, that his 
capacity for evil was increased by it. Metaphysicians, 
or those educators who view everything from a basis 
of metaphysicSj deny possible hereditary qualities; 
and if, according to this doctrine, he had an equal 
organization for good and for evil with the rest of 
mankind, and, as he possessed a greater intellectuality 
and a more extended education than the majority 
of Grecian learned men, he should have been less 
debased. 

If the circumstances surrounding the individual 
wholly form his character, and if, also, education cul- 
tivate the moral faculties of the mind, as Mr. Buckle, 
a good representative of this theory, alleges is true 
in both instances, the higher classes of Greece should 



126 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

have possessed this quality in greater predominance 
than any other contemporary race. Before the fallen 
liberties of this nation had been made the basis for the 
conquest of the world by a Philip and an Alexander, 
the learned classes had carried the culture of the intel- 
lectual powers to a more extended degree than any 
people of their time then in the world. But instead 
of finding the educated classes bettered under the 
moral law ; instead of its rendering them more virtuous 
than the ignorant portion whom they despised, they 
were only sharpened in their appetite for evil: in 
proportion to the development of their intellectual 
powers, they fell from moral position and became the 
most debased of mankind, except the Jews just before 
their dispersion ; and from that day to this, we firmly 
believe, no class of men in the different nations of 
the earth, not even the worst leaders of the Jacobin 
clubs of the French revolution, have presented such 
perfect perfidiousness. 

It has been shown in this work, the maimer in 
which these two extreme conditions are wrought. The 
immoral and the intellectual conditions of the learned 
classes are traversed by the author, for the purpose of 
exposing the false theoretical principles, or defective 
system of education, then prevalent and now in vogue 
in this country. Its progress is now more rapid 
than it was then, and if the defect be not corrected, 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 127 

the most deplorable consequences may be expected. 
The elements of disintegration are now at work in all 
portions of the Union, and if some more correct method 
of education be not established to form a different 
character in the rising generation to arrest its progress, 
a helium interecinum will ensue, our cities be laid in 
ashes, or the republic destroyed; the principles of 
autocracy superseding those of autonomy. In the 
next chapter we shall show that Christianity cannot, 
and, in fact, no other system of religion can, check 
that increase of evil now everywhere so apparent. 
Defective systems of education and ecclesiastical errors 
have been productive of great injury to the primitive 
elements of morality; and we shall, in its proper 
place, proceed to show, by such a statement of facts 
as enables us to comprehend the truth of those allega- 
tions, their bearings on mental life. 

At the first opportunity, that is, when the affairs of 
government in Athens had become desperate by the 
length of the war, they, being opposed in finances by 
the treasuries of Persia in addition to those of Lace- 
daemon and her allies, the dispiriting of the people by 
their late defeats, and the prospective ruin of not only 
the state but of the city itself, from a Phoenician fleet 
which was approaching it, in co-operation with allied 
armies, the higher or learned classes, both civil and 
military, those in command of the armies, and those 



128 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

also in charge of the administration of civil authority, 
betrayed the interests of the people, by disposing of 
all laws of republican equality, and establishing oli- 
garchial ones in their stead. To this the Athenians 
were brought by the designed conduct of the educated, 
of whom Alcibiades was but a fair representative. In 
concert with the nobles, he represented to the people, 
after holding out to them the calamities which were 
impending, that if the democracy were abolished, he 
could the more easily obtain favor of the Persian king, 
as this person, exercising sovereign power, placed 
more confidence in the agreement of a privileged aris- 
tocracy than in a people wielding popular rights."' 
And this he well knew to be wholly and totally false, 
for the sovereign of Persia had, for more than a hun- 
dred years, been burdened by fugitives of this class 
from the Hellenic states, who had gone abroad to avoid 
execution at home for their crimes. This immoral 
condition of the educated of Greece was perfectly 
understood by all intelligent nations having commerce 

S3 "Alcibiades, who was well informed of all that passed among the 
Athenians, sent secretly to the principal of them at Samos, to sound their 
sentiments, and to let them know that he was not averse to returning to 
Athens, providing the administration of the republic were put into the hands 
of the great and powerful, and not left to the populace, who had expelled 
him. Some of the principal officers went from Samos, with designs to concert 
the proper measures for the success of that undertaking. He promised to 
procure the Athenians not only the favor of Tissaphernes," [Persian satrap,] 
"but of the king himself, upon condition they would abolish the democracy or 
popular government; because the king would place more confidence In the 
engagements of the nobility, than upon those of the inconstant and capricious 
multitude."— BoLLiN's Ancient History, vol. 1, page 335. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 129 

with them. Like ' ' Pnnic faith, " " Grecian duplicity ' ' 
was common to the knowledge of mankind, having its 
origin in the conduct of the nobles only of that nation, 
and confined to them in its application. 

Toward the close of the war of the Peloponnesus, 
the learned feared nothing so much as each other. 
Political animosities, bitter rivalries, and the utter 
want of humanity toward enemies, imported that the 
nobles had become a generation of thugs. 

The foregoing general declarations are thoroughly 
supported by historical facts, and to crown every act 
of wrong, coeval with their education, the nobles 
accepted the conditions proposed by a criminal and 
traitor to his country, as a thing desired by them, in 
the deposition of the virtuous from all share in the 
enactment of legislative laws. This they wrought by 
a systematic deception of the populace. As Alcibiades 
had betrayed every cause to which he had been 
pledged ; so had all his colleagues. The only differ- 
ence between him and the rest of the learned was, in 
this respect, the great superiority of his natural ability 
and boldness. At the time the proposition was made 
by him for a change of the republic into an aristocracy, 
his class had already brought the government to ruin, 
and the people of Attica to a considerable degree of 
extinction. 

After the war in Sicily, in which, by his own 



130 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

personal influence, he had engaged the Athenians, had 
proceeded to hostilities, he caused a revolt of the 
allies of the latter; he then proceeded to Sparta, 
exposing those designs which he himself had planned 
and pledged himself to 'execute against Syracuse, Car- 
thage and Lacedsemon. He then betrayed those 
obligations which he had made to the people dwell- 
ing in the land of his asylum; and his course in 
Sparta was so villainously depraved, that even the 
infamous of that celebrated state could no longer 
endure his base conduct, his double treachery to 
friend and foe, and they accordingly pronounced 
sentence of death against him. Although jealousy 
of his brilliant intellectuality had exercised the feel- 
ings of the Spartan aristocracy, they had, notwith- 
standing, just ground to complain of the crimes 
which he committed among them. 

In the event of the reconstruction of the gov- 
ernment, those who wielded authority at Athens, 
represented to the people that if they sacrificed the 
sovereignty, which properly belonged to them, until 
the state should be extricated from the extinction, 
as a nation, by which it was threatened, legislative 
power should revert to the people.'* It was this 



54 " Pysander was sent to Athens with some of the same faction, to pro- 
pose the return of Alcibiades, an alliance with Tlssaphernes, and the abolition 
of the democracy. They represented that, by changing the government and 



GEiiERAL INTRODUCTION. 131 

sort of systematic deception, by taking advantage of 
the people in the distresses of their hopes and fears, 
that the democratic constitution of Attica was over- 
thrown by those who should have been its protectors, 
being at the time its pretended guardians. 

The soldiery, after the events which had occurred 
at Athens were known to them, would no longer obey 
the commands nor tolerate the presence of those lead- 
ing military officers, who, in violation of the law, had 
been concerned in the conspiracy to convert the free- 
dom of the people into a condition of vassalage to four 
hundred tyrants. They, therefore, relieved them from 
all oflBcial obligation to the army, and elected men, 
possessing both virtue and ability, from their own 
ranks, and resolved to firmly defend the state against 
a common enemy from without, and against those who 
had become traitors to the cause of the republic, from 
within. ^ ^ 



recalling Alcibiades, Athens might obtain a powerful aid from the king of 
Persia, which would be a ceriain means to triumph over Sparta. Upon this 
proposal great numbers " of the people] " exclaimed against it, and especially 
the enemies of Alcibiades. But pysander, advancing into the midst of the 
assembly, demanded t\ hether they !inewany other means to save the republic 
in the deplorable condition to which it was reduced ; and as it was admitted 
there were non& he added that the preservation of the state was the question 
and not the authority of the laws, which might be provided for in the sequel. 
* ♦ * Though this change was very offensive to the people, they gave their 
consent to it at length, with the hope of re-establishing the democracy here- 
after, as Pysander had promised, and they decreed that ho should go with 
ten more deputies to treat with Alcibiades and Tissaphemes." — Rolldj's 
Ancient Hisxokt, vol. 1, page 335. 

55 " The army accordingly organized itself as an independent state. It 
held meetings as a legislative assembly; it claimed for itself the revenues 



132 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

The nation, by the vices of the higher classes, 
divorced its political body from the people and the 
army, to the latter of which they were, by the very 
terms of civilization, bound to furnish every encour- 
agement and support, especially when it was opposed 
by forces which greatly outnumbered it. The con- 
dition of this nation was most deplorable. One of the 
officers of the army, who had gone from^Samos to the 
capital, returned and represented the state of affairs 
at Athens, with a full description of the terror that 
reigned supreme in the environments of the city. 
"No man's life," he stated to the army, "was any 
longer safe there, and no woman's honor. Those in 
power shrank from no deed of violence, and," he 
added, "intended to bring into their power the fam- 
ilies of the men serving on the fleet, in order, by 
detaining the former as hostages, to reduce the latter 
to submission." The army had to resolve itself into a 
body politic, as the educated, with a hired army of 
assassins, had mastered the people at the capital. 



from the allies ; It proceeded to fresh elections, in order to remove all sus- 
picious persons from the post of general, and to transfer the command to 
proved men of its own choice. Thus Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus were elected 
generals, and in face of the double enemy now opposed to the army, there 
prevailed in the latter a fuller concord and a more ardent spirit than ever. 
Even without the aid of the faithless city, her soldiers felt strong and suffi- 
cient in themselves; and if they should not be able to return, they at all 
events had in their possession ships and arms, by which they might obtain 
for themselves a new city and country." — Cubtius' History of Greece, vol. 
3, page 470. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 133 

Of the Athenian allies, most of them had revolted 
for no other apparent reason than because half of the 
civilized world were in arms against the little state 
of Attica. Peloponnesus and her allies ; Persia, with 
her mighty treasuries; the revolted provinces had 
become aggressive enemies;^® Syracuse^'' and Phoeni- 
cia^ s, were all in belligerent hostility to this unhappy 
nation; and their fleets on the sea, their numerous 
armies on the land, were in proximity to the capital, 
hovering around it, waiting only for a favorable oppor- 
tunity to give the finishing blow to Attic existence. 
Athenian finances were exhausted, the large property 
holders distressed, the mercantile trade of the city, by 
constant interruption, broken ofi" and destroyed ; part 
of the poor had perished, and those that remained 
rendered poorer by the length of the war ; and farmers 
impoverished by the payment of those taxes which the 
government had been forced to make. Almost every 



56 " In fact, the people of Eubcea, Chio and Lesbos, with several others, 
gave the Lacedsemonians to understand that they were ready to quit the 
party of the Athenians, if they would take them under their protection. 

"He" [Alcibiades] " embarked with Chalcidaeus for Chio, which took up 
arms upon their arrival and declared for the Lacodsmonians. Miletus also 
soon after revolted."— Rollin's Ancient History, vol. 1, page 334. 

57 "But before the blockade of the city" [Miletus] "was complete, a new 
fleet made its approach. It was the most dangerous of all their enemies, 
Hermocrates, who again prevented the Athenians from achieving the victory 
which they already deemed certain. He had caused himself to be sent, with 
twenty vessels from Syracuse and two from Selinus, to continue the war of 
vengeance in tlie iEgean, and to inflict upon Athens her death blow." — 
CuKTius' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 442. 

58 Ibid. 446. 



134 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

family was in mourning for those which, had been lost 
in the long and bitter conflict. A large part of the 
male population had been cut off, leaving a great 
disproportion of one sex to the other. In consequence 
of this fall of the idolized, the army were more sad- 
dened, dispirited and weakened than at any other 
phase of corruption which the war had developed. 
In addition, a civil war was now threatened between 
the people and the aristocracy, in consequence of the 
intrigues of the latter to establish unlimited power at 
the expense of the masses. Doubt and despair, at 
the melancholy aspect of surrounding circumstances, 
presented themselves on every side. 

Such was the inauspicious condition of this unfor- 
tunate republic, when these — shall we, through the 
false delicacy of the age, hesitate to pronounce such 
descriptive terms as are applicable to their qualities — 
matchless wretches destroyed the last consolation of 
a good citizen, for which the army and state for two- 
thirds of a generation, had been contending. Far 
better were it for Attica to be in socage to the con- 
stitutional crown of Sparta, than to make greater 
contributions, without any sort of liberty, to four 
hundred tyrants of despicable character. Did the 
educated of this republic in those troublous times, 
which were the turning point in the history of all 
Greece, try to arrest the country from the conquest 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 135 

which now threatened it? From a position of unpar- 
alleled pecuniary prosperity, of peace, and of opulence, 
the people were forced into an almost endless war, by 
them, more ruinous to Greece than beneficial to the 
contemporary nations of the earth. 

They had, as before hinted, represented to the 
masses that an oligarchy would be more respected for 
integrity with the kingdom and satrapy of Persia, 
better command their confidence, enabling the state 
to effect a loan with which to continue the war. The 
state treasury had been so often depleted and replen- 
ished by the tax gatherer of the state, that the latter 
could not now raise funds to defray the costs of civil 
administration. ^ ® In these dire necessities, which now 
more than ever pressed from all sides upon the repub- 
lic, the people at the capital listened with some degree 
of patience to a proposition of change in the consti- 
tution. It was also understood by the masses that 
if means were obtained, Attica would recover her 
revolted provinces, and thus be able, in the end, to 
preserve the union of her dominions. They farther 
represented that in the form to which the change 
was to be effected, there would be no essential 



59 "The democracy was far too costly a thing to admit of being carried 
on after the revolt of the allies ; In the present period of llnaiiclal dcrirth, It 
was impossible simply to collect the pay for the council, the courts of justice, 
and the public assemblies."— Cubtics' History of Gbeecs, vol. 3, page 463. 



136 UlSTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

alteration in the principles of government. ^° From 
a partial acquiescence of the multitude, the learned 
proceeded to take unwarranted liberties till the repub- 
lican government was entirely removed.^' 

After the learned had so initiated the people that 
they would not be alarmed at slight departures from 
the former usages of government, they supplied 
themelves with ruffians armed with concealed lethal 
weapons, for the assassination of such as should give 
evidence of opposition, or dissatisfaction of the tyran- 
nical usurpation. ^2 Thus prepared, they proceeded 
to act, to establish themselves in power. It will 
readily occur, from a view of their preparation, that 
they did not hesitate as to the means they were to 
employ, were it necessary to sacrifice every citizen 
in Athens. In spite of education, the great moralizer 
of those who place their hopes upon the old system of 



60 On this head an able and reliable author has represented the oligarchs 
as saying : " But it does not follow that on this account popular rights should 
be abolished ; a civic body was to continue to exist, but not in the same form 
as hitherto."— OuRTius' History op Greece, vol. 3, page 463. 

61 "These were the theories which now zealously spread, and which, 
owing to the talents and sophistic artifices of their advocates, met with 
undeniable success. The conspirators advanced in their proceedings step by 
step in order to prepare the decisive coup d'etat ; they passed from permitted 
means to unpermitted, from persuasion to force; for it was one of their 
sophistic principles that it is unnecessary to be over conscientious in the 
pursuit of a good end." — Ibid., page 464. 

62 " They had a common fund for their purposes, and held venal men 
In readiness to act as their instruments, as well as armed followers, hired 
abroad and fully prepared for any kind of service."— Ibid., page 464. 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 137 

metaphysics, they preferred to rule supreme over the 
dead bodies of their victims, than live in equality and 
harmony with them. They murdered in cold blood 
a great many of the people who had no political 
consideration with the public, and made themselves so 
terrible that no one dare whisper his opinions regard- 
ing the constitutional crisis or the murders com- 
mitted. ^^ Many bodies of well known citizens were 
found in the thoroughfares of the city, which had 
been secretly stabbed by the hired mercenaries of 
these tyrants; and fear, through their heartless acts, 
had so seized the people, that the latter had not 
the courage to enquire as to who committed the 
deeds. Secret organizations were formed by them, 
and were under the special direction of these des- 
potic assassins, for the purposes of murder, and 
their deeds of this kind were so frequently and 
stealthily performed, that they filled every mind with 
horror, and paralyzed the courage of the inhabitants 
of Athens. It was by such means as these that they 
finally triumphed over the friends of the constitution. 



63 " Thus Androcles was got rid of by assassination ; and after him other 
victims fell. No enquiry was ventured as to the authors of these crimes. 
Those who were not members of the secret clubs were awed into silence; 
and the power of these clubs seemed doubly creat, because it worked in the 
dark ; liberty of speech was suppressed, and the action of the legitimate 
organs of the State were crippled ; the Probuli were either in the plot, or 
were a^ed and infirm persons ; the council weis accustomed to be the mere 
Bhadow of authority ; and the civic body lacked both leaders and union."— 
CuBTius' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 464. 



138 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

stamping out the former and then the latter, first by 
a system of deception, and then by taking the lives of 
the people. By the fear which they impressed on 
the minds of the people, they effected a complete 
destruction of the democratic government.^* 

Before their fall from power, instead of supporting 
or strengthening the army in its opposition to the 
enemies which now, more than ever, pressed upon 
every portion of the state, they entered into secret 
treaty of peace with Sparta^ ^ for the recognition of 
their own government, irrespective of the cost in 
dominions to the state, if they could only perpetuate 
their own aristocratic power over the people of the 
nation. It will readily be seen that no one of the 
conspirators could expect to conclude a peace with 
Sparta without surrendering up to her some prov- 
inces, as she already had most of them in her 
power at the time of the embassy. The true 
method, or better course to have pursued, would 
have been, had they the interests of the people as 
their desire, to have recovered the provinces as far 



64 "Externally the forms of the constitution still continued in exist- 
ence; but the actual government was in the hands of the conspirators, who 
declared their intention with increasing openness, till at last the Athenians, 
full of fear and utterly dispirited, consented to regard the alteration of the 
constitution."— CuBTius* History of Greece, vol. 3, page 464. 

65 "After, however, this attempt had failed, he" [king of Sparta] "gave 
a friendly reception to a second embassy from Athens, and encouraged the 
Athenians immediately to dispatch deputies to Sparta to conclude peace in 
the name of the four hundred."— Ibid., page 467, 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 139 

as possible, to have beaten off the enemy, and then 
tendered peace. Otherwise no favorable terms of 
peace to the state could be expected. But an hon- 
orable peace to the nation was not the wish nor the 
design of the tyrants. It was the hatred which the 
people of Attica bore despotic principles, that fired 
them during this long war — a fear of finally falling 
under the Spartan despotism. It was the mutual 
jealousy of these two states, that, at the rising 
supremacy of the one, the other would become 
eventually subordinate to the peculiar laws, free or 
aristocratic, of the other. 

The conspirators did not design to yield up the 
provinces, or make equivalent propositions, without 
concessions from Sparta, of a military character, to 
support their tyrannical government over the people 
of Attica.^® Upon a rupture occurring, caused by 
jealousy,^'' among them, they proceeded to take the 



66 In support of this, a reliable author alleges that " they were resolved, 
if no other way should be left open to them, to rule their native city" 
[Athens], "even under the protection of Peloponnesian troops; for in their 
eyes the supremacy of their party passed all other considerations. Antiphon, 
Phrynichus, and Archetolemus accordingly proceeded to Sparta, in order to 
enter into fresh negotiations."— CtiBTitrs' History of Greece, vol. 3, p. 460. 

67 The leaders of the tyrannical party desired to construct a fort in the 
vicinity of tho city, for the purpose of receiving the Spartan forces which 
were to support their claims to power. But upon the discovery, by a portion 
of the tyrants, that they would be thereby dispossessed nf long coveted 
ambition by the others, they opposed the motion, endeavoring to retrace their 
steps, and regain that confidence of the people which they had justly for- 
feited. 



140 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

lives of members belonging to the opposite faction.^' 
It was not a love in the laws of democratic equality, 
that caused this division, but a fear, in a part of the 
four hundred, that they themselves would fall into 
that bondage which they had helped to prepa-re for 
the people, and thus was caused their efforts to protect 
themselves from that thraldom which threatened all. * ' 
As already seen, they were determined to force them- 
selves as rulers upon the people without their consent, 
supported by the arms of Sparta. This was their 
design, irrespective of the interests of the masses, and 
they were bound to carry these measures into effect, 
were it at the expense of one half of the lives of the 
inhabitants of the republic. They were perfectly 
regardless of all sentiments of justice, and callous to 
all feelings of humanity. Far worse were they, than 
he, who upon the highway attacks and relieves the 
traveler of his gold, for when the highwayman has 
attained this one object, he is satisfied with the result. 



68 "The first object of vengeance was PhrjTiichus. Scarcely had he 
returned from the odious embassy to Sparta, when he was assassinated one 
evening not far from tlie council-house, in the densely crowded market 
place."— CuRTTcrs' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 481. 

69 " And now the opposite party (occasioned by the split) restrained itself 
no longer; for they perceived their own ruin to be involved in the completion 
of the fastness in the Pirseus, and in the eiiccess of these treasonable designs. 
The moderates were their only chance of safety in joining the popular party. 
Thus, then, a counter revolution was plotting among the four hundred them- 
selves, and in secret conferences the victims were marked out, who were to 
be sacrificed to the hatred of citizens, and sacrificed with all possible publi- 
city. In order to test their authority." — Ibid., pages 480-81. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 141 

This was not the case with these tyrants, as they were 
called by the Greeks. The tendency of the govern- 
ment, which they were endeavoring to establish, was 
a direction of the revenues of the state to their own 
nses, and by such means of taxation, incident to 
despotic power, to secure to themselves the servitude 
or vassalage of the rest of the state. This is what was 
meant by tyrannical governments in ancient times. It 
was not the form of its organization, but the e£fect 
which it had upon the people to oppress them, that 
made it odious ; and of whatever form it may be, if it 
be partial in the enactment of its laws and their admin- 
istration ; that is, if the rulers extended advantages to 
some which they denied to others, it became despotic 
to those whose rights were in suppression. '' ° This was 
the condition to which the tyrants conspired to subject 
the inhabitants of Attica.'^ 

What education there was to be had in those days, 
these men had possessed themselves by long and close 
study. Be it remembered that it was an intellectual 



70 In America, before the slave-holders' rebellion, a portion of the inhab- 
itants were held in slavery, and the profits arising from their labor passed to 
those who were denominated their masters. The government of the United 
States, although a republic, was to the slaves the most oppressive kind of 
despotism. From the relation which the one bore to the other, cannot but 
lead a rational mind to this conclusion. 

71 It will readily occur to him who is acquainted with the history of 
Greece, that these tyrants had no other object, just before the close of the 
war, but the establishment of an absolute govemment. 



143 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

and religions culture and, none other. These two sys- 
tems have been in existence for five thousand years 
at least, and continue to be the only ones at the present 
day. The religious and the intellectual faculties of 
the mind have been the immediate objects of all edu- 
cation, from the earliest recorded ages. The learned 
of Greece, in their earlier infancy, had received that 
parental instruction in justice and virtue that those of 
more subsequent times have. But this is no culture ; 
it is only an indoctrination of the views which another 
may have of certain principles. This kind of moral 
training has some tendencies to store the memory with 
both a right and a wrong understanding of the rights 
and wrongs of questions, but is not effective in bring- 
ing the moral feelings to vigorous and active strength. 
For six thousand years, mankind have been actively 
employed in the discovery of objects and the sciences, 
and the world has, all that time, been replete with 
religion, by which their respective faculties have been 
trained and disciplined to the highest development, 
while the moral faculties have remained abandoned as 
regards culture, except what little effective benefits 
there is in parental instruction. That these faculties 
have not been entirely expunged from mentality, is 
owing more to the efforts of nature to restore that 
which has been injured by the ignorance of mankind, 
than any disposition in man to preserve that which 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 143 

was a gift to him by the creative will of Almighty 
Q-od. Should one judge mankind by their acts, in an 
impartial manner, he must conclude that almost the 
whole human race are rather perverters and destroyers 
of truth and other attributions of nature, than students 
and cultivators of organic law. But we must return 
to our duty of exposing the true moral character of 
the learned of Greece by their own conduct ; showing 
thereby that education, although not a cause, was a 
means, of divesting from this class of the Hellenics 
all causes which had a tendency to produce moral 
principles. 

That the higher classes did not desire peace and 
prosperity to the state under some other (as one might 
suppose) more favorable form of government, such as 
a limited monarchy, or some equivalent, we have only 
to trace their acts a little farther after their first fall 
from that power which they held over the city of 
Athens, to convince us. 

Before the battle of Arginusse, the afiairs of the 
Athenians had become the most desperate of any 
Greek state, by the defeats which she had received 
on land and sea, and the complete abandonment of 
almost every province which she had possessed, or 
its equivalent as an assistance to Attica, by conquest 
to Lacedaemonian arms. Her finances were exhausted, 
her people impoverished, and the bones of at least 



144 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

one-fifth of her able-bodied males lay bleaching npon 
fields of battle, or buried in the bed of the ocean. 
The people were reduced to the utmost despair. But 
rather than surrender their liberty, they preferred to 
surrender their all. One more fleet was fitted out at 
Athens to defend a government which was now in the 
hands of the people. ''^ It was a last hope, a last efibrt, 
almost a last act. The battle of Arginusee was fought 
and victory crowned the efibrts of Attic arms, and the 
power of Sparta and her allies upon the sea were 
entirely, for the time, extinguished. Lacedsemon had 
fallen under the mighty blow which she had received. 
She once more desired peace. ' ^ Now was the time for 
Athens to escape from a struggle which had lasted the 
better part of a mortal's life. The people required 
peace, for they were in a deplorable condition. 
Farmers who, before the war, were in independent 



72 " It" [the fleet] "was a levy of all the remainlDg resources of the state, 
made by desperate effort ; and, with a feeling that it was now a question of 
victory or absolute ruin, the last fleet of Athens sailed out to sea."~CuR- 
Tius' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 533. 

73 "The Spartans were doubly discouraged by the news of the defeat, 
inasmuch as their highest hopes had followed their hero Callicratidas on 
his triumphal career. It was to be anticipated, that after this defeat the 
Persians would again withdraw from co-operation with the Lacedaemonians, 
since their money payments, after all, failed to produce any practical results. 
As to the lonians, it could not be expected that they would once more show 
themselves ready to afford effective aid ; and the Sicilian allies, the Boeotians 
and Euboeans, had already done their best. On what then could the hope 
of better future success be grounded? Accordingly once more" [Attica] 
" had the upper hand ; and envoys were dispatched to Athens, in order to 
renew those offers which had been made after the battle of Cyzicus."— 
Ibid, page 636. 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 145 

circumstances, were now in a state of starvation, and 
were begging for bread in tlie streets of Athens. 
Sackcloth and ashes, if not on the person, could be 
read as a characteristic expression in the countenance 
of every citizen and alien in the state. Now there was 
a "day of grace" presented to the higher orders to 
relieve themselves from a part of that odium as a 
consequent of conduct, which must in all subsequent 
times attach to their character. 

This class well knew that the treasuries of Persia 
had almost constantly paid off the naval and military 
armaments of Sparta, and, for her own interest, would 
continue to do so in the future ; while it was as equally 
well known that Attica had been compelled, in the 
past, and would be, in the future, to raise her own 
within the dominions . of the republic. The latter 
possessed no other resource from which to fill her 
exchequer but by the revenues of her provinces. 
When she was, during this long war, and just previous 
to the battle of Arginusae, deprived of these revenues 
by the loss of the provinces, there could be left to 
her no other resource, but to surrender at discretion. 
This she could have done very easily at the begin- 
ning of the war, and it would have been far better 
for her, thus to have avoided shedding blood, expend- 
ing treasure, and thereby escaped the tedium of a 
conflict which had no other tendency but to extinguish 

1 



146 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the prosperity of all Greece. At no time during the 
whole of her campaigns, was there a necessity for 
snch a disposition of her afikirs except at the close. 
A number of opportunities had presented themselves 
for settlement, and Sparta had been willing to accede 
to any reasonable terms, to save herself from extinction 
as a people, as an independent state. The higher 
classes of Athens were enabled, through that capacity 
which they had acquired for distorting &cts and mis- 
representing truth, by close study and long practice 
in duplicity, to present, at this greatest crisis of the 
republic, more favorable conditions for the future of 
the state, and thus deceiving the people, caused them 
to reject all considerations of peace from Sparta, short 
of such as would be to the latter a provincial subordi- 
nation. This, that a people, as proud and stubborn as 
the Spartans, the Athenians well knew would reject. 

In peaceful times all is quietude and happiness to 
the majority of mankind ; all are engaged in surround- 
ing themselves with the comforts and conveniences of 
life, and any number of pure enjoyments and pleas- 
ures, alike healthful to body and mind, which, for a 
beneficial end, a mighty hand has bestowed upon 
mortal existence. It is this innocent enjoyment of 
human life, quite short enough for one's passage, that 
a good citizen wishes for all the inhabitants of his 
country, and, in fact, to every one on the globe. Yet 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 147 

there are many individuals, always have been, and 
always will be, whose mental constitution amounts to 
a moral deformity, that are ever desirous of substi- 
tuting sorrow and misfortune for bliss, blasting the 
happiness and hopes of mankind, whenever they can 
derive thereft-om pecuniary advantages or political 
positions. This is a melancholy condition which all 
good regret. That most all, indeed, with very few 
exceptions, of those composing the higher classes of 
Greece at this time, were wholly and totally destitute 
of all moral feelings, their acts toward the people and 
the generals, after the latter and former had gained 
the victory over the enemy at ArginussD, is most 
clearly established beyond the doubt of a weak and 
vacillating mind. 

The great moral principles of the lower orders of 
the state, from a period long back in the past, had 
caused the officers of the army and navy to pay the 
utmost attention to the condition of the dead and the 
wounded, to bury the former with solemnity and 
honor, and to care for the latter. As no laws could 
be passed, causing them to do these, they must of 
necessity be such enactments as would deter the offi- 
cers from abusing these injunctions, by attaching 
penalties for their violation. But no laws ever 
existed among the Athenians, of a punitive nature, 
for those insuperable difficulties, known among 



148 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

lawyers in modern times as the acts of God. In no 
civilized state is one made responsible for misfortunes 
which cannot be foreseen, provided for nor prevented. 
The contrary would, did it exist, be characteristic of 
an ignorant and savage despot. 

The student of Grecian history learns with regret, 
that the most cultivated persons of the highly civil- 
ized state of Attica, long before the beginning of the 
Peloponnesian war, also throughout its entire dura- 
tion, were steeped in a corruption which has found 
few parallels, not even among the darkest pages of 
ancient and modern records. From political jobbers, 
and corrupt demagogues, figuring for positions in 
subjection to the sovereign will of the people, they 
aspired to regal power ; they passed from the commis- 
sions of public crimes to private ones, from treason to 
the state, to the murder of public and private citizens. 
Before the close of the battle of Arginusae, a furious 
storm had set in and made the sea so rough, that it was 
an impossibility for the survivors to transfer the dead 
and the wounded from disabled vessels to the rest of 
the fleet. When the storm abated, it was discovered 
that all the wrecks had disappeared from the surface 
of the deep, either driven ashore or sunken to the 
bottom. During the last of the action, the com- 
manders of the forces had left a part of the fleet 
in the hands of subaltern officers, Theramenes and 



GENERAL INTEODUCTIOISr. 149 

Thrasybulus, charged to recover the dead and 
wounded from the sinking ships. ""^ In making up 
the report of the action, the names of Theramenes and 
Thrasybulus had been mentioned as the officers upon 
whom devolved the responsibility of delivering the 
wrecked. But the foresight of two of the officers, who 
seemed to possess a clear understanding of the corrupt 
partizans that flooded the assemblies in the city, 
changed the report so as not to endanger the life of any 
one of their colleagues. '' ^ Although this act of Pericles 
and Diomedon exhibited great consideration of the 
rights of others, it must be remembered that this was 
a combination to resist those hypocritical charges that 
would in all probability be brought against them as 
a body, by those tyrants which had, a little before, 
fallen from power. But no sooner had the leading 
officers of the navy arrived in Athens, notwithstanding 



74 "The other part of the fleet was ordered, under the command of 
Theramenes and Thrasybulus, to save the wrecked, and to pick up the 
dead bodies. But a terrible northwest wind rushing down from Mount Ida 
made all action impossible ; and when the fleet was at last able to issue 
from the harbor, it was too late for the accomplishment of either purpose. 
The storm had swept away every vestige of the battle."— Curtius' History 
OF Greece, vol. 3, page 535. 

75 " The report of the battle, drawn up by the generals by common con- 
sent, simply stated that the storm had mrade it impossible to save those who 
had been wrecked ; a statement originally proposed, in which Theramenes and 
Thrasybulus had been mentioned by name as those who had been charged 
with taking measures for the purpose, hadj been omitted, on the motion of 
Pericles and Diomedon ; it being desired to have no handle for throwing 
suspicion on any individual persons, but rather, after the manner of faithful 
colleagues, to charge the entire body with the work of responsibility." — 
Ibid., page 539. 



150 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the great victory they had gained over the enemy, 
than they were all, except the Judas Iscariot of their 
number, thrown into prison for not rescuing those who 
had been wrecked.''® One of the very generals who 
had been most favored in the report, and that one 
who, if any were at all guilty, was the principal cul- 
prit and most at fault in neglect of duty, was the 
person who made the charges which sealed the fate of 
the rest of his colleagues.'''^ The fallen conspirators 
had systematically deceived the people and wrought 
them up almost to a condition of frenzy,''^ so that 
when the oral report was delivered by the generals, 
the masses were more disposed to condemn the generals 
than acknowledge those obligations which they were 
under to the ones who had, at a signal blow, saved the 
state. '' ^ These learned conspirators allowed the most 



76 "The six others, confiding in the justice of their cause, quietly 
returned to Athens and made a report by word of mouth in the council. 
******* qq tijg motion of Timocrates, a member of the council, 
the generals were placed under arrest, and the settlement of the charges 
against them left to the civic body."— Cuktius' History of Greece, vol. 
3, page 538. 

77 "And although, in the present case, Theramenes was himself involved 
to this extent, that if any one was to blame for the death of the wrecked. 
Tie was the guilty man; yet he was resolved to take advantage of this oppor- 
tunity for his party purposes, and to requite the considerate kindness evinced 
toward him by the generals, by appearing as their accuser, and calling them 
to account for neglect of their religious duty."— Ibid., page 539. 

78 " But the most effective measures had been taken by the conspirators, 
to produce the desired state of mind in the people, against the day when 
the report of the battle was to be publicly read."— Ibid., page 538. 

79 "Instead of the report being listened to with gratitude toward the 
gods, a furious outbreak of passion ensued immediately upon the mention 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 151 

abandoned criminals a legal defense/" while they 
denied it to those who, if properly supported by 
good counsel and just measures, might have effected 
the ratification of a peace, which would have been 
a prosperous one to the people of the republic, and 
the establishment of a means by which the state might 
have recovered from the financial bankruptcy into 
which, by the shocking vices of the educated, the 
nation had been plunged. 

And finally these generals were altogether denied 
the rights of trial, and after Theramenes had secretly 
passed around and among the private families, using 
his influence to inflame their minds and prejudice 
them against these brave and noble officers, the con- 
spirators thought that there was sufficient prejudice 
acting upon the feelings of the council to warrant a 
conviction. ^ 1 If they could completely distract the 



of the wrecked. Loud Invectives were uttered against the generals for hav- 
ing neglected their duty ; and the answer which they received to the report 
of a victory passing the highest hopes, was their deposition from oflSce. It 
was not even thought necessary to wait for their defense."— Curtius' His- 
tory OF Qreece, vol. 3, page 538. 

8o " There was a lack of men to watch over the legality of public pro- 
ceedings; and thus, at the very earliest stage of the trial, the liberty of 
defense belonging to the accused was illegally restricted, although only 
recently Aristarchus, who was universally known to have betrayed a frontier 
fortress to the enemy had, after falling into the hands of the Athenians, 
been allowed an unlimited time for his defense."— Ibid., page 540. 

8i In speaking of the festival of Apaturla, Curtius says : " Theramenes 
found in this an excellent opportunity for exciting the citizens and their 
wives against the generals ; and although it was absolutely impossible to 
determine how many of tlie missing had fallen in the fight, and how many 
might possibly have been saved, had a search been subsequently instituted 



152 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

people of the republic by disorder within, the state 
would soon have to succumb to the pressure of out- 
ward enemies, and thus triumph in their oligarchial 
measures over the fallen liberties of the land. They 
could in this manner establish themselves in power as 
masters over the people, who would then become 
slaves. 

Slavery would not exist, were there not advantages 
resulting to the oppressors. There are two of these : 
one is an element of vanity, a disposition in the human 
mind, however weak it may be, to entertain a sentiment 
of superiority of self over the majority of the world, 
and one also which foolishly, but strongly, desires 
the possession of the superfluities of life. But all the 
considerate portions of mankind, while they acknowl- 
edge the effects of these elements upon themselves, 
endeavor to place them in subjection to moral princi- 
ples, with a due regard for the rights of others. It is 
the criminal, however powerful he may be by the 
number of his retainers, who derives his sustenance 
from the misfortunes of his fellow creatures. Even 
the robber is satisfied when he has received what his 
victim for the moment has possession. But what shall 



through the field of battle, yet it was now declared to be the fault of the 
generals, that, on this occasion every one had to wear the black garb of 
mourning on the Apaturia. * * * Thus, by means of a vile abuse of human 
feelings, a new tempest of passion was conjured up ; and when this had risen' 
to a height, the second assembly of the citizens commenced." — History OP 
Greece, page 541. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 153 

we call a human being, if lie be such, who is satisfied 
with nothing short of shackling the necks of his coun- 
trymen with an odious bondage, and grinding out of 
them the little of a laborious life. The mind of man 
is not familiar with a descriptive term which fully 
defines the moral condition of the tyrant. Nor is one 
necessarily a tyrant if he wear a crown. Despotic 
principles can as easily emanate from republican poli- 
ticians as from electoral or hereditary monarchs. This 
character of politicians or potentates may be deter- 
mined by the laws which they enact. 

But when we are called upon to contemplate the 
character of those who, desirous of living in oppression 
of their fellows, hesitate not to murder those that stand 
in the way of their advancement to power, we have 
altogether different persons from the mere usurpers, 
those more abandoned in morals and wholly given 
over to the revelries of the animal faculties of the 
mind. The moral faculties cannot be so wrought upon 
as to be entirely expunged from mentality, had they an 
existence in adolescence. Under such circumstances, 
a sufficiency remains to support an appearance of 
supremacy in the moral sentiments, while the influ- 
ence of these upon the mind is very weak. This 
condition of the primitive mental powers is favorable 
for great dissimulation ; an appearance of one thing, 
but in reality another. This mental state, together 



154 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

with extensive culture, was the means by which the 
educated classes were enabled to gain a complete mas- 
tery of deception over the people, and by it compel 
them to give a helping hand to their own ruin. This, 
we say, was the mental status and moral condition in 
which we have found, by a careful investigation, the 
educated classes to have been just before, during and 
after the close of the Peloponnesian war. They had 
enough of those moral faculties to render them able to 
appreciate these qualities in others, thereby qualifying 
them to imitate the characteristics of those possessing 
these noble gifts, when the truth was, the moral fac- 
ulties had fallen into a condition of bondage to the 
animal faculties of the mind. After this fall of that 
part of their mental nature, that part, too, which was 
designed by organization to be in supreme control 
over the rest of the mind, — ^those faculties common to 
animals became elevated to phrenic supremacy; the 
organic constitution of mind in them was then reversed, 
the human form became inhuman in character, the 
feelings of kindness were exchanged for those of piti- 
lessness, virtue for vice. 

This permutation of the primitive mental powers of 
the higher orders must have preceded the exhibition 
of their depravity ; and their conduct at the time of 
the arraignment of the generals is conclusive evidence 
of the fall hereinbefore mentioned. Of course no 



GE]!fEKAL INTRODUCTION. 156 

feelings of compassion could have influenced them in 
the least, as they struggled with their utmost might to 
forever close the gates of a legal trial to the heroes of 
the Arginusse. Sentence of death was immediately 
passed upon the six, contrary to all law, and these 
unfortunate men were led away to execution. ^ ^ 

The higher orders crushed every effort of the people 
to bring the war to a conclusion. They involved the 
state for their own official popularity and pecuniary 
gain. The masses looked to them as trusty counselors 
in times of danger and difficulty ; they had been ele- 
vated by the ballots of the nation to positions of profit, 
of honor ; and this was requited with the destruction 
of the national polity, and the designed subjection of 
the people to the behests of foreign enemies. Although 
the true character of this class discovered itself to the 
most ignorant, its appearance was too late, for the ruin 
of the people was as complete as their deception. ^ ^ 

Thus far we have discovered, that the cultivation 



82 "The sentence of death was pronounced, and the generals were 
handed over to the eleven for execution. Thus died the son of Pericles and 
Aspasla, to whom his father had made a fatal gift in obtaining for him the 
Attic citizenship, and with him died Erasinides, Thrasyllus, Lysias, Aristoc- 
rates and Diomedon."— Cubtius' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 545. 

83 " Of what avail was it, that the meaning of the villainous game played 
by the oligarchs had now become manifest ; that the public indignation at the 
discovery found vent in the arrest of Callixines and of four others, who were 
to be subjected to a capital trial ? The oligarchs were, after all, able to protect 
their partizans, and Theramenes escaped without farther hurt ; though he 
failed in his candidature for one of the vacant oflBces of general. Tlie oli- 
garchic party continued to prevail in the council. The citizens linew not in 



156 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of the intellectual powers has no effect to improve the 
moral faculties of the mind, bnt, on the other hand, 
we have seen that, in proportion as the Greeks became 
educated, they became correspondingly depraved. 
That there cannot be a moral education without a 
special culture of the primitive moral powers; and 
that this cannot be wrought by a discipline of either 
the intellectual or the religious, is, by the concurrent 
testimony of all history, positively established. 

There was a depth of corruption in the educated of 
Athens, and, in fact, of all the higher classes of the 
Hellenic states, that, in our review of their deeds, 
we have not reached. Most all the states possessed 
classes of men whose turpitude was in exact propor- 
tion to their education. We did not design to travel 
outside of Attica for our purposes of proof, for it is 
enough to mention that they all had their Ly San- 
ders, who, if thfey did not murder whole armies,^* 



whom to place trust. They felt no confidence in their demagogues, Cleophon, 
Archedemus, and the rest, and as little in the men of the opposite party, 
•whose villainy had become palpable. The latter were hated and the former 
despised ; and yet the civic body fell alternately into the hands of either." — 
CuRTitrs' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 554. 

84 " All the other vessels fell into the hands of Lysander, together with 
three thousand men; the rest had effected their escape to Setus. The great 
body of the prisoners was transported to Lampsacus, and there tried by 
court martial, to which Lysander summoned those of the allies who were 
present. He thus obtained an opportunity of allowing all the hatred which 
existed against the Athenians among the lonians, Boeotians, Megareans, etc., 
to find full vent once more ; and being able to pretend that he was accom- 
plishing the work of vengeance upon Athens in the name and by the orders 
of the Hellenic nation. The Spartans loved to envelop their most cruel 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 157 

committed crimes equally inhuman and cruel. Greece 
had no contemporary nation which possessed a more 
educated class, or a greater number of educated men. 
Among them all, none, perhaps, combined greater 
intellectual culture with such tremendous depravity, 
as did this favored and at the same time unfortunate 
nation. The student of history is constantly aston- 
ished, as he contemplates the vices and rottenness 
into which the higher orders had fallen. No term 
in the English vernacular is commensurate with its 
extent. It is a hopeless undertaking to endeavor to 
reach the bottom of the "bottomless." 

After the battle of Egospotami, in which the Athen- 
ian forces were defeated, their affairs were in a more 
desperate condition than ever, and were deserted by 
all their allies, except two small democratic states, 
the inhabitants of which the higher orders were 
neither able to rule nor to corrupt. Let it be ever 
remembered to their immortal honor, that the people 
of the island of Samos, and the little state of Argos, 
both democratic in their constitutions, adhered to the 



deeds in empty forms of legality. Thus, as formerly in the case of the 
Plataeans, they now complacently listened to the most unmeasured accusa- 
tions against the defenseless Athenians, and sentenced them all to deatli. 
Admantus was the single person whose life was granted him, in return for 
the services which he had perfoomed for the foe. But the proceeding which, 
among all the horrors perpetrated at that time on the shores of the Helles- 
pont, most violently affected the feelings of the Greelfs, was Lysander's refusal 
of even a decent burial to the corpses of his victims."— Ccktios' History of 
Greece, vol. 3, page 553 



158 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSIOIT 

cause of Attica, and shared her joys and sorrows to 
the last. But while the uncorrupted inhabitants of 
these uncultivated states were true to their oaths, 
how was it with the intelligent citizens of Athens— 
those of education, of position, and of wealth ? Born 
to all the advantages resulting from riches and edu- 
cation, they possessed the ability to perform great 
services to the state of which they were members. 
From him who has talents and wealth, much is 
expected, as he is possessed of opportunities which 
he cannot, by any principle of equity, claim as exclu- 
sively belonging to himself. 

As Agis and Pausanias surrounded the city on 
land, thereby shutting off all communications in this 
direction, and Lysander with his fleet of two hundred 
ships prevented all ingress from the sea, the prices of 
breadstuffs rose to such a height that they were entirely 
beyond the means of the poorer people. As starvation 
presented its horrid features, the prospects of it to the 
city created great excitement and confusion in the 
minds of the inhabitants, for they knew that, by a long 
siege, they would be finally brought to it. The war 
was no longer carried on abroad, nor in adjoining 
states, but had gradually narrowed down its limits till 
the capital of the republic was surrounded on every 
side by the imposing armies of the foe, which threat- 
ened a deplorable death to the inhabitants of the city, 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 169 

or its conquest by assault upon its fortifications. The 
people had lost all confidence in the higher classes, and 
could not rely upon the ability of those who had not 
been favored with advantages peculiar to the oligarchs 
of Athens. Alcibiades, who, had they flattered his van- 
ity, might possibly have dispersed the enemy, although 
the democratic constitution, in all probability, would 
have fallen beneath the encroachments of his unprin- 
cipled ambition. But whatever he might have been 
able to accomplish for the good of the state, the jeal- 
ousy of the higher orders had deposed him from 
power, and, therefore, the people could not, at this 
juncture, avail themselves of his experience and great 
ability. 

The Athenians had more to fear from the oligarch- 
ical party within the city, than their enemies which 
surrounded it from without. The oligarchs had, as we 
have seen, long prior to the siege, entered into secret 
and traitorous negotiations with the Spartans for the 
overthrow of the constitution, and the establishment 
of despotic government upon its ruins. This they 
were endeavoring to accomplish, while they pretended 
to maintain a firm disposition to support the demo- 
cratic constitution of the state. They now came forward 
again, as they had before in every hour of trouble, to 
distract the public mind and thereby destroy every 
effort on the part of the people to preserve the 



160 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

independence of the republic, and those elements of 
freedom which had existed from the fall of the last of 
the Pisistratidse. ^ ^ While the higher orders thus 
represented themselves as loyal to equitable laws, they 
were in secret communication with the enemy for the 
subversion of freedom, not only of Athens, but of all 
the Greek states into which they could carry their 
influence. ^ " 

When, during the forepart of the siege of the city, 
the state of Sparta proffered terms of peace to Attica, 
with several provinces and her constitution intact, the 
higher orders caused a rejection of this proposition, 
and threatened violence to the person of him, who 
should say or do anything in favor of its ratification. ^ '' 



85 " But the ancient evil also reappeared, the source of which consisted 
in the existence of a small but united number of citizens, who worlied against 
the honor and independence of the city, and in favor of the foe, whom they 
needed, in order to establish the sway of their party on the ruins of the 
democracy. This party, always firmly organized in itself, was ever at hand, to 
take advantage of every national trouble for its own purposes. As soon as a 
storm lowered over the city and spread terror in it, this party came forward as 
a real power. At the present moment, Athens was terrified by the tremendous 
events which had recently taken place, and was not only weakened as to her 
means of defense by her great loss of citizens, but also thoroughly shaken in 
her bearing toward her foes both within and without. The large influx of 
strangers disturbed and confused the conduct of affairs, while terror was 
excited by the imminent siege."— Cubtius' History of Greece, vol. 3, p. 562. 

86 In speaking of the manner the educated attempted to destroy all 
systems of democracy in connection with the aristocrats of liacedsemon, 
Curtius says : " And yet, even now, the oligarchs found Athens less easy to 
deal with than the other places, where, with the aid of Lysander, the demoo- 
racy was rapidly abolished."— Histort of Greece, vol. 3 page 563. 

87 " Although, then, the Spartan authorities held out the prospects of the 
maintenance of the Attic constitution, and even of the continued possession 
of Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros to the Athenians, the latter rejected all 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 101 

Cleophon, one of the oligarchs and an orator of consid- 
erable reputation, backed by the noble families of the 
city, intimidated the populace so that none dare act in 
the premises. ^ ^ The Athenians did not expect such 
favorable terms, but, on the contrary, had reason to 
believe they would be sold into slavery according to 
the existing rules of war. But the lower classes of 
Sparta, having at this time a good control over their 
nobles, did not desire to reduce the Athenians to a 
condition of slavery to the inhabitants of any central- 
ized government,^* fearing, perhaps, that the same 
elements would eventually subject themselves to a like 
state. But while the majority of the Spartans were 
desirous of preserving to the Athenians their freedom, 
the higher orders of the former were in secret negotia- 
tion with the same class of the latter, for the complete 
abolishment of all popular governments. 

When the oligarchs foresaw that the greater part of 
the Athenians would be starved into the conditions of 
the peace proposed by the Spartans, the former had 



proposals, including a demand for razing the walls ; and a civio decree was 
even passed, wliich made all discussion of tills point penal." — CiraTnjs' His- 
tory OF Greece, vol. 3, page 507. 

88 " Sure of the assent of a large number of honorable citizens on this 
point, Cleophon was able to menace any one with open violence who should 
say a word in its favor."— Ibid., vol. 3, page 567. 

8g " The Lacedsemonians, however, said they would not reduce to bond- 
age a state which had done groat good at the time of the greatest danger that 
had ever befallen Greece."— Xenophon's Hellenics, lib. 3, ch. 2, 20. 

1 1 



162 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

recourse to another device which was in perfect relation 
to their past treacherous career. They represented to 
the masses that they could obtain more liberal terms 
by sending an embassy to those in authority at Sparta, 
or those who were in command of its forces.®" On 
this occasion, the oligarchs took advantage of what 
little confidence the people had left in Theramenes/^ 
which, although very small, was still possessed by 
him to a greater extent than any of the other nobles, 
because he had opposed the power of the four hun- 
dred. So many times had the people been deceived 
by the many solemn declarations of patriotism, and 
their love of the ancient virtu(^ of the people on the 
part of the oligarchical party, imd this being followed 
by their attempts to overturn a government peculiarly 
adapted to cultivate these virtues, extend equal rights 
and prosperity to all, had occasioned a complete loss 
of confidence in their honesty ; and the murders which 
they had committed to establisli their power, had so 
fully unveiled their purposes that the most stupid 
could no longer be deceived. There is, however, in 
the human mind, an element known as hope, which 



go " Theramenes undertook to obtain far more favorable terms than this, 
and even held out the prospect of a variety of advantages to be secured by 
means of a sliillful negotration with Sparta; but at the same time asked 
unconditional confidence and absolute powers." — Cdrtius' History of 
Greece, vol. 3, page 568. 

91 "In vain the people urged their objections; they guessed his traitor- 
ous intentions, and warned the assembly against entrusting their all to the 
hands of a Theramenes."— Ibid. 



GENERAL INTEODUCTIOX. 163 

frequently gives us a belief, or a desire to believe, in 
those in whom, reason teaches, no confidence can be 
placed with any prospect of its being treated in good 
faith. With a perfect understanding of the existence 
of this element, these adroit knaves undertook to 
balance themselves upon it, and those surrounding 
circumstances which, as we have seen, were of the 
most distressful nature. 

By the extension of that time which the embassy 
would necessarily require, they could, under the 
existing condition of the people and the oligarchical 
intrigues with Spartan nobles, accomplish the demo- 
lition of all republican equality in the state of 
Attica. ^2 By the influence of Theramenes and the 
rest of the nobles, he and nine others were dis- 
patched with full powers to effect a treaty of peace. 
The embassy departed on its mission, did nothing, 
remained away four months, while the people were 
starving in great numbers.®^ But instead of obtain- 
ing more favorable terms for the cessation of hostility. 



92 "It was, therefore, of double importance for such men as Theramenes 
to arrive at an understanding with Lysander, and to ensure themselves of his 
support. The other object achieved b'i the conspirators through tlieir 
embassy was this : that In the meantime no public assemblies were held at 
Athens on the question of peace, and that thus the loyal adherents of the 
constitution were effectually prevented from taking any measures on its 
behalf."— CuRTius' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 569. 

93 " On their entering the city [at their return] a great multitude poured 
round them, afraid of their having returned unsuccessful for it was no longer 
possible to delay, owing to the great numbers who were dying of famine." — 
Xenophon's Hellenics, lib. 2, ch. 2, 21. 



164 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

they got l6ss, and Athens was finally stripped of every 
province of which she was possessed, besides being 
obliged to pull down the wall, which, as a defense t;) 
the city, she most dreaded to do.®* This curtailment 
of Attic domination and the number of her inhabit- 
ants was, without doubt, the desire of the conspirators, 
as they could more easily subject a small people than 
a great nation. The people, to escape death, con- 
sented to their dire demands, and thereupon peace 
ensued. Thus did Attica become subjected to the 
power of Lacedsemon, not through her own weakness, 
but through the traitorous conduct of the educated. 

After the fall of Attic independence, and her incoi - 
poration with the Peloponnesian confederacy, it v/as 
doubtless designed by the commonalty of Sparta to 
h^ave the domestic government, or the legislative 
enactments, to the people, not interfering with its 
local constitutional provisions further than limit its 
military strength and make it tributary to Spartan 
power. But the higher orders of Lacedsemon had 
pursued a policy of their own with the oligarchs 
of Athens, which was perfectly consistent with the 
moral characters of both. Spartan authorities granted 



94 "The Athenians were to pull down the walls of the harbor and the 
lines connecting the latter with the city ; their dominion was to be limited t.o 
Attica; they were to readmit all exiles, to join the Peloponnesian confed- 
eracy."— Cdbtitts' History of Orebce, vol. 3, page 571; also HzitLEKics, 
lib. 8. ch. 2, 20. 



GENERAL USTTKODUCTION. 166 

a gnard, which they induced their own people to 
believe was necessary to remain in Athens till inter- 
national animosity and bitter hostility to the conquest 
had subsided in the masses. This is what the con- 
spirators desired, and it was that for which the whole 
educated classes had long been in secret negotiations 
with the enemy. They needed the strong military 
arm of Sparta to crush the freedom of the people, and 
establish their aristocratic principles upon the remains 
of fallen equality. They had already taken the pre- 
liminary step, i. e., had extinguished the independ- 
ence of the state. With a well armed and disciplined 
guard, the oligarchs felt positive of subduing- all 
opposition to their schemes to debar the inhabitants 
from all participation in the sovereignty of the state, 
and secure to themselves the positions of despots, and 
those revenues of the nation which were not required 
to be paid into the treasuries of the confederation. 

The great disregard of the laws by the learned, at 
times, their necessary suspension, frequent violations, 
the forced enactments of half legalized measures, mis- 
constructions, maladministration, the new relations 
which Attica bore to Lacedsemon, all this chaotic con- 
dition of the civil government of Athens, rendered it 
necessary to revise the laws. For this purpose thirty of 
the most educated of the city were elected to draft new 
laws in partial conformity to old but familiar statutes. 



166 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

How far the nobles of Sparta had. a hand in this selec- 
tion it is not very easy to determine ; but is worthy of 
observation that the Lacedaemonian forces did not 
leave the city till the Athenians had made this selec- 
tion. ^ ^ They were elected for the purpose of a recodi- 
fication of those laws which were the acts of their 
forefathers, and from which, the people had noticed, 
prosperity had formerly extended itself to all. ^ ^ But 
in place of proceeding to meet the requirements of the 
people, they intentionally put off the question, and, 
leaving the state in an anarchical condition, proceeded 
to establish a government of their own. ^ '' They, then 
first of all, commenced to dispose of those, who, 
they thought, would be disaffected to their heinous 
designs. ^ ^ The nobles put them to death upon false 
accusations,^* of conspiring against the constitution. 



95 In speaking of this election, Xenophon says : " When this had been 
done, Lysander sailed away to Samos; and Agis withdrew the land forces 
froni Decolea, and dismissed them to their several cities."— Hellenics, 
lib. 3, ch. 3, 3. 

96 "It was resolved by the people to elect thirty men, who should draw 
up a code of laws from those inherited from their fathers, by which they 
should regulate their aflfairs."— Ibid. 

97 " Rut thou;jh elected for the purpose of drawing up. a codes of laws 
by which they should regulate their aflfairs, they continually deferred draw- 
ing up and promulgating those lawa, but appointed the officers according 
to their own pleasure."— Ibid., lib, 3, ch. 3, 11. 

98 It U from Curtius that we borrow these facts, that the oligarchs 
" recognized the necessity of seizing the persons of the leaders of the adverse 
movement, before they could proceed finally to regulate the constitution 
according to their own wishes."— History of Greece, vol. 3, page 573. 

99 ** Agaratus appears to have been forced to bring a statement before the 
council, in which he accused a number of honorable men of conspiring 



CrENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 167 

when none was recognized as being in existence, as 
there was a usurption of the lights of the people at 
the time, by the same men, with one or two exceptions, 
that were now in power. They sent to execution 
these men because they supposed in them the tyranny 
would meet with opposition. It was the oligarchs 
that caused this wholesale execution and not the 
people. * ° " 

After the execution of those who, as they supposed 
by their general candor and attitude, would oppose the 
reduction of the republic to the principles of absolut- 
ism, the nobles began to convict and execute their own 
colleagues, so that the latter might not, by ability and 
ambition, stand in the way of their own advancement 
to centralized power, ^ " ^ They did not confine them- 
selves in their murders to their own ambitious class, 
nor to those who offered opposition to their schemes, 
but proceeded to put out of the way, in great 



against the constitution, although manifestly no constitution was at the time 
acknowledged, and only a party government was carried on by arbitrary 
means for selfish ends."— Cubtius' History of Greece, vol. 3, page 573. 

loo To still deceive the people and make them believe there was some 
form of popular government intact at Athens, " the council brought the mat- 
ter" [accusation] "before the citizens: an assembly was held in the Piraeus, 
in the Munychian theatre, in which, under the influence of the oligarchs, 
sentence of death was pronounced on the accused." — Ibid. 

loi "And when he" [Calibius] "sent with them soldiers of the guard, they" 
[oligarchs]" arrested whom they pleased ; no longer those only who were Ill- 
disposed and little worth, but nowsuch as they thought to bear least patiently 
being thrust aside, and who, if they should attempt any measure against them, 
would find the most numerous supporters."— HEiiiiENics, lib. 2, ch. 3, 14. 



168 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

numbers, the best and most harmless men, who did not 
meddle with politics in the least, although the latter 
knew their liberties were being subverted by the 
nobles J"* They gave full vent to their feelings of 
hatred, put many to death through revenge, and 
many for the possession of their property. * " ^ Being 
short of funds to pay their hired assassins, they mur- 
dered resident foreigners, and confiscated the latter' s 
estates to supply the deficiency. ^ °* The higher orders 
had not the honesty common to rogues, as, after they 
had armed the three thousand citizens, they applied 
the cup of poison to the lips of each other. Thera- 
menes, who had as much to do in the establishment 
of the tyranny as any one of the rest, as wholly desti- 
tute of moral principle, caring nothing for the people 
nor for their rights, attempted to combine the whole 
people of Athens against the thirty, and thereby cut 
them all ofi" at one blow, that the way might be clear for 



102 " But afterward he " [Critiasi " was headlong in putting many to death, 
(inasmuch as he had himself been banished by the people,) while Theramenes 
was opposed to it; alleging that it was not right to put to death any one who, 
though honored by the people, did the better kind of men no harm."— 
Hellenics, lib. 3, ch. 3, 14. 

103 "When this was done," [arming the three thousand and the disarming 
of the multitude,] " thinking that they might act as they pleased, they put to 
death many others for the gratification of their hatred, and many others for 
the sake of their property."— Ibid., lib. 3, ch. 3» 31. 

104 "And in order that they might have money to give to the guards, they 
determined to choose one each of the resident aliens, and, having put them to 
death, to conflscate their property."— Ibid., lib. 2-, cb. 3. 21. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 169 

his own ambitious purposes. * " ^ But his vaulting ambi- 
tion overreached itself; -he fell a victim to the snares 
which he had laid for the whole of the oligarchy, and 
died of poison which he was preparing for them.^"' 
After the death of Theramenes the thirty had no 
opposition, and by their great number of executions 
filled the land with mourning and the whole popula- 
tion with affright. Backed by the three thousand, 
the tyrants issued an order to all of those who resided 
in the state of Attica, who were possessed of property, 
to remain on their estates, and then began to arrest 
and to convict them, by a spurious trial for pretended 
offenses, executing all who did not flee the country. 
Besides those whom the tyrants executed, the refu- 
gees, fleeing from their despotism, filled the lands of 
Megara and Thebes. So that the designs of the edu- 
cated were to destroy all the property holders, is 
perfectly evident from the order which they issued, 
and the frightful number of murders which they com- 
mitted against the inhabitants. It is also equally true, 



los Theramenes represented the aristocratic element to the Spartan gov- 
ernment, and was the agency through which issued the disastrous peace, and 
in consequence thereof, Athens' fail. He played a double game in the 
interests of the tyrants against the people, while he pretended to be solicitous 
for their good. He caused (in the council) the arming of the three thousand, 
and then attempted to array the whole state against the thirty. See his speech 
in connection with that of Critlas, Hellenics, lib. 2, ch. 3. 

io6 That Theramenes, at the time of his arrest, was preparing to excite 
the populace to madness against the tyrants and thus destroy them, seems 
to be evident from his oonnection with the events which followed the arrival 
of the guards in Athens, Ibib., lib. 8, ch. 8. 



170 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

that the number which filled the states above men- 
tioned is evidence that no crimes had been committed 
by them, that by their conviction and the confiscation 
of their estates the tyrants would become possessed of 
great wealth, while the people would be deprived of 
all means of defense against the pretensions of the 
oligarchs to absolute power.*"'' 

What must be thought of the moral character of 
those who carried into execution such horrible plans 
as the excision of a large part of the inhabitants of a 
nation. If the reader be disposed to believe that such 
an enormous crime is impossible, beyond human con- 
ception, because it would be at any time inexpedient, 
he is compelled to confess its truth from the fact that 
the returning refugees, in a body, were of such vast 
numbers as to be able to defeat the three thousand in 
conjunction with the Lacedaemonian forces which were 
sent against them.^^'^ These exiles then drove the 
tyrants from all authority which they had exercised 
over the state, executed and banished them from the 



107 "The thirty thinking they might now" [after the death of Therame- 
nes] "play the tyrant without fear, published an order to all who were not 
in the list" [of the three thousand], "not to come into the city; while they 
brought them to trial from their estates, that themselves and their friends 
might take possession of their lands. And when they took refuge in the 
Piraeus, they arrested them there likewise, and filled Megara and Thebes 
with fugitives."— Hellenics, lib. 3, ch. 4, 2. 

108 See Xenophon's Hellenics, lib. 2, ch. 4, in which he describes the 
defeat of the tyrants and Lacedaamonlans. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTIOISr. 171 

conntry. ' ^ ° Tlieir executions were so vastly great, they 
exceeded those of the Jacobins of the French revoln- 
tion; they killed "almost more" in the eight months 
of their power than all the Athenians which fell in any 
ten years of the Peloponnesian war, and this, too, not 
for the welfare of the nation, but for their own inter- 
est.^ lo That the corruption was not confined to the 
thirty alone, is evident from the assistance of the three 
thousand, which supported every measure, carrying 
into effect the most cruel robberies and murders, 
planned by the thirty. And after the thirty had fallen 
and been driven from the state, when the government 
of a despotism had become impossible in Attica, the 
learned continued their murders, and killed a party of 
JSxonians while in pursuit of provisions to sustain 
nature. ^ ^ ^ The character of the higher classes was so 
debased as to be a common by- word among the masses, 
and the latter firmly believed that the former did not 
possess one single virtue; and the lower orders so 
represented it to the higher classes, but through a 



log See Hellenics, lib. 2, ch. 4, 23. 

no Cleocritus, in his address to the Athenians, stated these facts to the 
tyrants themselves, who did not deny them : " And be not persuaded by these 
Impious thirty, who, lor the sake of their own gain, have J<illed almost more 
of the Athenians in eight months, than all the Peloponnesians in ten years' 
warfare."— Ibid., lib. 2, ch. 4, 21. 

Ill "They" [armed force of the oligarchy] "also fell in with a party of 
.Oxonians going to their own estates for provisions ; whom Lysimachus, the 
commander of the horse, butchered, though they begged hard for their lives, 
and though many of the cavalry were Indignant at his conduct."— Ibid., 26. 



173 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

conscions conviction of its trutli, the tyrants did not 
offer any excuses in palliation of their black deeds. * ^ ^ 
At the time that Thrasybnlus was put forward by the 
multitude to address the oligarchs, danger to any one 
was over, all were disarmed, and all turbulent elements 
becalmed. * ^ ^ Protection under the laws was extended 
to all, and every citizen, not included in the thirty, 
was, by the manner in which peace was consummated, 
exhorted to forget,*** if it were possible, and at all 
events to forgive. * * ^ As there was, therefore, nothing 
to restrain them in a full reply by way of defense, 
they certainly would have availed themselves of the 
opportunity and presented it, was there anything they 
could say in justification. 



112 When Thrasybulus delivered to the three thousand his opinion, he 
made this declaration to them, after the thirty were driven into exile by 
returned f upritives : " To you, gentlemen of the city, I give this advice, to know 
yourselves. And you would best gain that knowledge by considering upon 
what grounds you ought to be so lifted up as to attempt to rule over us. Are 
you more honest men ? Nay, but the people, though poorer than you, never 
yet >vronged you for the sake of money ; whereas you, though richer than all 
of us, have^ione many base deeds for gain. But since you have no claims to 
honesty, see whether, then, it is on your courage that you should pride your- 
selves. And what better test of this could there be, than the manner in which 
we have carried on war against each other." The supporters of the thirty 
tyrants now had an opportunity of expressing their opinion without f ear,— 
Xenophon's Hellenics, lib. 3, ch. 2, 40 and 41. 

113 Ibid., lib. 2, ch. 4, 39. 

114 "And having sworn not to remember past grievances, they stlU live 
together under the same government, and the popular party abide by their, 
oaths."— Ibid., lib. 2, ch. 4, 43. 

115 At the conclusion of the speech of Thrasybulus, he told the despots 
" that they should create no confusion, but live according to their ancient 
laws."— Ibid., lib. 2, ch. 4, 42. 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION 173 

Such was the moral character of the educated men 
of Greece just prior to its decline, and during its fall. 
We have seen that philosophy began with Thales, 
from 700 to 600 B. C, and that philosophy continued 
to absorb the attention of the Greek mind down to the 
middle of the Peloponnesian war, whereat all originality 
ended with Socrates. From this time forward, philos- 
ophy became rather a matter of learning, than a study 
and abstract reflection. The learned of Greece, at the 
beginning of their education, studied the languages, 
the sciences as far as they were then developed, poetry, 
music, and traveled for a knowledge of geography 
and the character of foreign nations, in distant lands. 
No particular system of instruction was adopted and 
followed, but all of those that we have mentioned were 
pursued by the Athenians, and afforded the means 
by which a preliminary education was arrived at. * * "^ 
But none assumed to be educated, who had not, at 
some period of his life, followed daily instruction 
under some distinguished speculative thinker. Philos- 
ophy was to them the finishing up of their education, 
and while, by the contemplation of their boyhood 
studies, the mind was in a condition of passive recep- 
tivity, under that of philosphy it was changed into a. 
state of critical activity. 



xi6 This author does not consider learning to be education, but that the 
latter to consist in a discipline of the mental powers. 



174 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

After the founding of the Ionic philosophy, Attica 
produced many highly educated minds, whose insin- 
uating subtilty and prodigious weight are still the 
admiration of all mankind. But at the end of their 
long war, when philosophic education was extin- 
guished by the execution or banishment of its votaries, 
and those who had received their instruction from its 
able masters, had expired, Attica, and, in fact, all 
Greece, brought forward few minds worthy of the fame 
extended to them by historic records. So that the 
period for a thorough discipline of the intellectual 
faculties of the mind must necessarily be placed 
between the birth of the Ionic school of thought, and 
the death of Socrates. No nation existed in ancient 
times possessing such close and extended culture, 
and, at the same time, united to such extreme wick- 
edness and cruelty, as did Greece, and especially the 
Attic portion of it, during the period above mentioned. 
Depravity increased with culture, the former being, at 
first, apparently something akin to an effect of the 
latter, and then changing to a cause which finally 
blotted out the latter with itself. While the unedu- 
cated were moral, the cultivated were steeped in 
iniquity, and committed all grades of crime. 

We do not claim that the education of the intel- 
lectual faculties produces a degeneration of the moral, 
but that by the manner it has been pursued, the system 



GENEliAL INTRODUCTION 175 

lias liad a tendency to contribute to this effect. That 
this defective system has had this detrimental action 
upon the character of man, history bestows the best of 
evidence for convincing, and it continues to work the 
same ruinous results now that it did in the days of 
antiquity. As it was with Greece, so has it been in all 
subsequent ages, clinging with the pertinacity of death 
to the vital happiness of mankind, till societies and 
nations have met with disastrous and melancholy 
terminations. 

Greece was selected by us, because its history is 
more complete, and better known by scholars, than 
any other nation of the ancient world, and being the 
birth-place of intellectual life, it presented a better 
example of the disproof of an antiquated and stupid 
belief. It has been a frequent remark of educators 
in this country, and in all others, that the educated 
Greeks, before Christ, possessed less education than a 
school-boy now-a-days does at the age of fifteen years. 
That this is wholly false, any one at all acquainted 
with the history of Greece must know. Nor had they 
reached the summit of all human wisdom, as was 
supposed by the sacerdocy of the middle ages. But 
some of the philosophic schools of Greece have fur- 
nished the sources from which many of the most 
eminent modern thinkers have borrowed their doc- 
trines. Leibnitz drew the substance of his Nomadic 



176 IIISTOliY OF THE DECLENSION. 

philosopliy from a combination of the Atomistic and 
Heraclitic schools of this ancient people ; and Bishop 
Berkeley borrowed from the subtilties of the Pyrrhonic 
philosophy his negation of the material world. These 
ancient philosophies furnished the dialectics for the 
scholastic metaphysicians of the medieval ages. Aris- 
totle' s system, although an eclectic, and not an original, 
one, is now studied at many universities of learning, 
both in Europe and America. One would naturally 
suppose that the writings of Thucydides and many 
others of equal worth, is sufficient evidence, without 
further examination, that the culture of this nation 
was no very mean one. Nevertheless it was confined 
to the richer people of the republic, while the poorer 
had to be content with barely enough learning to read 
and write, but having little intellectual discipline. 

The higher families of Greece and Carthage were 
somewhat similar in the discipline of their intellectual 
powers, and we find, by an investigation into their 
conduct, that the same conclusion must be drawn 
from their moral character. Yet there was no par- 
allel between the lower classes of the two.^'"* The 
lower orders of Carthage were traders and traffickers, 
whatever might be the individual capital invested, and 



117 la discussing the mental qualities of the people of a nation, or of a 
class of any particular nation, we intend by it, that a majority gives char- 
acter to that nation, or to that class, of which we at any time have made 
investigation. 



GENEEAL INTRODUCTION. 177 

dealt with the like profession of every portion of the 
mercantile world, both civilized and savage. The 
native Carthaginians, or those descended from the 
founders of the republic, as has been observed, were 
a nation of merchants, who worshiped mammon and 
made the ostentatious display of riches ^n evidence of 
their social and political consequence. In their many 
cities which in time sprang up along the northern 
boundary of Africa, they traded with every nation 
located on the Mediterranean by marine; and the 
tropical productions of central Asia and Africa were 
brought by immense caravans to this great metropolis. 
Slavery of races, as well as of condition, existed as an 
institution of the government, and, by its sanction, 
human beings were bought and sold in the country 
as much as any lifeless article. The commonalty of 
Carthage, by their multifarious mercantile transactions, 
were in continual association with most all races which 
were then known to the world, and that too with 
unprincipled sharpers, who cared little as to the 
means employed, if it wrought the desired result. 
The moral feelings of the multitude were blunted by 
this continual contact with these heterogenous ele- 
ments of corruption of the different races of mankind, 
whose vices were appropriated by the masses, made a 
part of their being, and thereafter became, if it were 
possible, a "second nature," which ruled over their 

12 



178 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

mental constitution and directed them in all their pur- 
poses of life. The agriculturists were by far in the 
minority, and those who constituted this minority 
were generally large landholders, who had become 
rich either by inheritance or by commercial trade, 
after the first one hundred and fifty years from the 
establishment of its political body. But the whole 
people of this republic, rich and poor, apparently 
had but perverted objects as an end of life; one 
was the accumulation of riches to satiate sensual 
desires. Most all races daily met to exchange 
commodities in the streets of the cities, and there 
intermingled for the advantages of commercial specu- 
lation ; so that the vices and the tricks of rascality of 
all nations, from the civilized states of Oreece and of 
Rome to the less cultivated Bedouins of Arabia and 
north central Africa, were there represented. The 
wretched condition of their moral qualities found 
a readier exchange than any marketable goods which 
were presented for public barter ; and for it no price 
was paid in anything of representative value, but it 
secretly and perfectly added its ingredient cause of 
Carthage' s fall, and was in the end the purchase price 
of her independence, her freedom, and the lives of 
her people. 

It was by this extensive trade that the commonalty 
of Carthage became, in a maimer, intelligent, for by it 



GENERAL INTRODUCTIOIT 179 

they were introduced into a knowledge of the habits 
of all mankind, and by their travels in foreign lands 
learned considerable of geography, of history, and of 
the social life of distant tribes and nations. Although 
this works no thorough discipline to the intellectual, 
it nevertheless did, in the age of this republic, acquaint 
its people with a great variety of different objects, and 
by it became more perfectly learned in those things 
which came within their range, than they could have 
obtained from books. Thereunder they probably 
became the most intelligent people in the world. 
The poorer classes of Greece, on the other hand, 
had no communication with the outside world, but 
were compelled to till the hard and sterile soil, or 
expend their vital energies, day after day, on the 
public works. By this non-intercommunication of the 
inferior people of Greece with the inhabitants of for- 
eign states, there was no abnormal action, no wander 
of thought aping the corrupt manners of the latter, 
but it was turned to its natural channel, the enjoy- 
ments of domestic life. It will be readily seen that 
there would be, under its normal action, a limited 
activity, the excesses of all the faculties being cur- 
tailed by the affections of the more humane feelings, 
which, by constant refinement, were kept in the most 
active condition. Political ambition, morbid desire for 
superfluous wealth, and all the sensual appetites, were 



180 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

effectually checked by the influence of the family 
fireside; the love of parents, of children, of relative 
consanguinity, of country, were in this manner pre- 
served in the masses to protect the people and the 
entire nation against the barbarous principles of the 
educated of native and of foreign states. 

The freedom of the Hellenic states did not begin to 
decline until the intellectual education of the higher 
families was firmly established under the tuition of 
philosophy. But, as has been observed, as rapidly as 
they became mentally disciplined, they were ruined in 
morals. Nothstanding the wrecked morality of the 
higher, the lower were greatly in the majority, pre- 
serving the supremacy of the moral sentiments ; and 
it was not till one hundred years of gradual degenera- 
tion of the nobles, that the latter, in conjunction with 
the demagogues of foreign powers, were enabled to 
extinguish the principles of autonomy. The twenty- 
seven and a half years which the war lasted, indicates 
the tenacity of the natural laws with which the inferior 
classes were supported against the aggressions of their 
own aristocracy and the neighboring portions of the 
civilized world. 

War is the most dangerous calamity that can befall 
a nation, for however victorious in arms it may be over 
an enemy, there is a constant submission of the noble 
to the ignoble, a conquest of the moral by the animal 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 181 

faculties of the mind. A nation is not necessarily 
fallen because it is subdued ; its conquest is only an 
apparent evidence of its fallen state. Bat a political 
organization is in declension whenever the morals of 
the people are in process of destruction ; the loss of 
its independence, and especially that of its freedom, 
follows the overthrow of the superior sentiments of 
the mind in the majority of its members. Intellectual 
culture had not reached and caused a degeneration of 
the morals of the majority of the Greeks, they had 
been shielded from the blighting of this system of 
education. It required something farther to reach 
their case and remove their mentality from all normal 
conditions. The blasting influences of war were neces- 
sary, and war they had, foreign, civil and fratricidal, 
for the length of a generation. Men were born after 
its commencement, grew to manhood, and died in 
arms. This atrocious system was adopted and pur- 
sued by the higher orders of Attica, to terminate its 
independence and subvert its freedom, but when 
Athens fell all Greece declined with her ; the sun of 
all their hopes was clouded, and their moral faculties 
subverted, all rational government thereunder being 
in effectual destruction. War is rather a conflict 
upon the mental than upon the physical, and the 
Peloponnesian wrought the complete ruin of Greece ; 
and although for a time under the guiding hand of an 



182 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Alexander, she was enabled to prevail over the degen- 
erate sons of ancient patriarchs in Asia, it was rather 
natural than marvelous ; it was the triumph of the 
animal faculties in one nation over the dementia and 
effeminacy of others. It was a conquest of slaves by 
slaves. 

It has been set forth in this work that man is 
possessed of certain faculties in his mental economy 
which, by their character, are placed in subordina- 
tion, and made servitors, to the moral sentiments of 
the mind. We have also seen that the intellectual 
faculties have no feelings, and, like the animal, are, 
as it were, instruments of the ethical part of man's 
mental being. Man's propensities^ ^^ being in con- 
stant activity by the daily business of life, are steadily 
undergoing discipline, while the ratiocinating portion 
of the intellectual is little- cultivated, for in business 
transaction individuals rely more upon perception 
than upon reason. But those faculties which take 
cognizance of cause and effect, of moral and of relig- 
ious principles, must be, for a lengthened period, 
caused to act upon some object belonging to the 
peculiar province of each, in order to produce an 
education of them. In the higher orders of Greece, 
the first and the last were stimulated to operate upon 



xxS The word "propensities' in this work is used as synonymous with 
the animal faculties. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 183 

legitimate objects, the first by the direct and close 
study of philosophy, the last by early devotion to 
religion. But down to the time of the Socratic from 
the Pythagorean, the greater development of the 
reasoning powers pretty much extinguished the 
fundamental religious elements from the minds of 
philosophic students. 

There was no system of rigid moral instruction, 
and, from reasons heretofore mentioned, the moral 
faculties, by long disuse, gradually decreased from 
their former strength, and, as far as their influence to 
control individual conduct, they were so far destroyed 
as to give little evidence of their former existence, and, 
were it not for equitable laws then still in being, one 
would naturally suppose, by the acts of the nobles, 
that they were deprived from the first of all functions 
in this direction. As the intellect is not possessed 
of feelings, and as it is, by its very nature, in sub- 
ordination to the moral faculties; and whereas, when 
the animal powers became stimulated to great activity 
by daily culture, the strong passions of which they 
are possessed, elevated them to a condition of suprem- 
acy, and by it completely ruled over the human mind, 
carrying their own feelings into characteristic effect. 
So with that class in Hellenic history which is usually 
termed the noble, the moral faculties sank into a sub- 
ordinate position to the animal. When such had 



184 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

become the elements that were to rule over Attica, 
they became destructive of all existences, not except- 
ing their own. As the higher families principally 
directed the concerns of the nation, the people, under 
the action of the animal powers, were helplessly driven 
into the Peloponnesian difficulty, which finally under- 
mined all influence of the moral sentiments in the 
masses, not for a time only, but for all time, to the 
existing generation. It was the fall of the moral 
faculties that occasioned the overthrow of the insti- 
tutions of Greece; for the power of all equitable 
governments is referable only to the moral faculties 
in the mind of a majority of its members. The 
failure of the moral faculties was followed by a 
failure of all moral effects, and no political consti- 
tution can long exist in absence of its cause. 

The moral faculties were the power of the free 
institutions of Greece, and it cannot be truthfully 
alleged that Grecian freedom fell at the extinction 
of its political body, for the latter was, at the time 
the old Attic government was demolished', evidence 
only of the former existence of the primitive organs 
of morality. All equitable laws, all just organiza- 
tions, are effects of these last faculties, and when 
their acts are swept away by the foolhardiness of 
mankind, it is only a disposition of what remains of 
their handiwork, a destruction of those monuments 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION 185 

which, testify of the glory of their former power. The 
fall of the moral faculties preceded that of the form 
of government. So it has been with all republics 
which have ceased to exist from that time to this, 
and will continue to be the case with them in all 
future time. Political institutions may exist for a 
time after the overthrow of the power which erected 
them, but they are, by the laws of nature, compelled 
to follow the fate of their author. 

By the system of education now prevalent, the 
moral primitive qualities, in the higher orders of the 
Hellenic states, first fell from all influence which they 
had exercised over the mind, and, by the depravity 
that was substituted in their stead, brought on the 
Peloponnesian war, by the corrupting tendencies of 
which they were enabled to extend the same lament- 
able condition to a large portion of the masses. It is 
but natural that no free and equitable government 
can depend upon a nation of criminals for a faithful 
execution of its provisions and support of its meas- 
ures. The free and equitable institutions were forced 
to submit to whatever terms the propensities tended to 
impose ; the freedom and the glory of the Greeks were 
sealed up and consigned to permanent extinction with 
the good features of Asiatic principalities which more 
vigorous contemporary powers had despoiled. 

Such was the work of intellectual education for the 



186 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

most flourishing people of antiquity. It is unrea- 
sonable to suppose that it will do better for the 
inhabitants of "The Great Republic." The system 
of Greek education was only an intellectual one ; ours 
is the same. We have seen that this does not project 
a culture of the moral powers ; it did with them, it 
cannot with us. However much intellectual education 
may be blended with religious, the combined tenden- 
cies of the two produce no beneficial action without 
both are under the special direction of the moral sen- 
timents. If the moral are not cultivated with the 
religious and the intellectual, so as to raise them 
above even an equilibrium, there can be no suprem- 
acy of the moral sentiments. The injurious action 
of this defective system of education is somewhat 
proportioned to the degree of its extension. 

In the United States of America, there are more 
colleges, properly so called, exclusively engaged 
in this education of the intellect, than in all the 
rest of the world. The seminaries, academies, and 
high schools are, comparatively, numberless. ^ ^ ® The 



119 In the single state of Ohio there were, in 1873, thirty colleses and 
universities, most of them having been long engaged in their labors. The 
first was organized in 1804, the last in 1873. There were also forty-one nor- 
mal schools, academies and female colleges, making seventy-one institutions 
established to educate the intellect of the people of one single state. In 
addition to these, there were three hundred and fifty high schools engaged, 
of course to a more limited degree, in the same occupation. 

See report of secretary of state to governor of Ohio, for 1873. Ohio 
Statistics, pages 411, 416 and 417. 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION'. 187 

facilities for education are, therefore, immense, gener- 
ating a prodigious growth of the intellect, and enlarg- 
ing the capacity of a large portion of the people for 
good or for evil. But we have seen that while it 
expands the intellectuality of mankind, it, at the 
same time, expunges the primitive causes of moral 
principles, and hence results in evil instead of good, 
disorganizing those moral elements of which republi- 
can governments must necessarily be composed. Edu- 
cation has not been, and is not at present, too 
extended, but too limited, limited to the religious 
and to the intellectual powers. 



CHAPTER lY 



GENEEAL INTEODUCTION. 

Brief Reflections on the Culture of the Primitive Faculties of the 
Mind — Assmnptions of Theologians regarding the Tendencies of 
Religion to enhance the Moral Qualities of Mankind — Effect of 
those Assumptions indirectly Contributory to the Reign of the 
Propensities, and to the Diminishment of the Moral Sentiments, in 
the United States of America — More Pertinacity exhibited by 
Modems on this question than by Ancients — Evidence of this EiTor 
shown by Religious and Moral Qualities of the Carthaginians — 
Necessities of direct, separate and systematic Culture of the 
Moral Sentiments to Prevent the Nation's Fall. 

In the creation of organs for particular functions, in 
organic matter, there was evident design, by Provi- 
dence, that each and all of them should act and be 
exercised in a legitimate and proper manner. That 
every one should be in operation a portion of time, 
is as positive as any law with which man is acquainted. 
It must be apparent to all prudent observers, that 
tliose faculties of the mind, producing characteristics, 
must have an active existence or nearly none at all. 
Each and all can be preserved, cultivated, and thereby 
increased to a very great extent, or can, compara- 
tively, be extinguished. And so perfectly have all of 

(188) 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 189 

these faculties been adjusted to each other, that no 
single one of them can be expunged without material 
injury to all. When all are well developed and in a 
healthy condition, there is a production of a certain 
balance, a certain harmony of life and action, which 
results in happiness and contentment to the mind, 
and even to the body, of its individual possessor. In 
the beginning of the world, those laws regulating the 
human mind were the same as now, and will be to all 
eternity. They are dynamical and not statical, and 
the faculties are constantly assuming the conditions of 
increase and diminution. Nothing remains, but every- 
thing, pertaining to mortal organism, is either in a 
process of growth or decomposition. Life or death, 
the one or the other, is in constant activity, not only 
in every being, but in every organ and faculty of all 
mankind. As it is a decree for man to die, so it is for 
every member which he possesses to undergo a similar 
fate. Portions of the human soul and body may 
partly perish, while the individual of whom they form 
a part may be in apparent health. But whenever any 
faculty is in a condition of atrophy, it is in one of 
death. We know that one may be in buoyant life and 
hope, while some one or more of his faculties are 
approaching, as far as relates to their influence upon 
character, the period of their excision. As any given 
muscle of the body may perish by disuse, so may 



190 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

any faculty of the mind disappear under the same 
regulation of nature. And as the whole number of 
faculties exceed the individual members of mankind, 
so do the increase and decrease of the former outnum- 
ber those of the latter. The augmentation of a faculty 
may be termed life, and its decrement that of death. 
Every faculty, in a healthy state, increases in pro- 
portion to its exercise, providing that labor be not 
excessive, that is, too long and concentrated. And 
all of the faculties can be augmented or diminished 
by proper exercise or its corresponding neglect. There 
can, therefore, in every faculty, be a creation or an 
addition to the original amount, to a very considerable 
extent, by the application of the natural laws. Every 
one thereunder, therefore, becomes responsible, cor- 
respondingly, for his own character, and cannot cast 
this authority upon a certain fatality, or a great and 
first cause. He, himself, becomes the author of what 
he is, although not always what he should be. 

The conclusions in the foregoing paragraph were 
drawn from those conditions which exist in a land of 
liberty. Heretofore philosophy, in most of its rela- 
tions, has been addressed to the intellect only. It has 
been confined to the investigations of the intellect- 
ual powers, except now and then a thinker who 
turned his attention to the religious, with the 
view that from this arose the moral sentiments 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 191 

of the world. This has produced and propagated 
the idea of the existence of a moral philosophy. 
Although there has been much written upon this 
subject, it has been so done, without any exception, 
by basing the whole structure on the supposition 
that the religious contains the moral, or upon the 
selfishness of utilitarianism. To us no more erro- 
neous doctrine can be conceived. Morality and 
religion are essentially different in their nature, and 
therefore are effects of altogether different causes. 

Great efforts have been made to improve the intel- 
lectual and religious powers of the mind, while nothing 
but the constant efforts of nature has been done to 
construct a system of moral science independent of 
religion, which was designed to improve the moral 
condition of the world. If Christ established any 
system which tended to regulate man to man and 
to Himself, it was so left that it has been, in practice, 
swallowed up by the religion with which it is taught 
and expounded. But the moral doctrines couched 
in divine revelation connect man mostly with his 
Maker. Yet the Saviour established no moral code 
by which, through rigid culture, the moral nature 
could be raised to a supremacy over the animal. 
The tendencies of His gospel subjected everything to 
the religious. But codes do little, if any, good. The 
Hebrews had the code of religious morals that was 



192 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

given to them by Moses, yet they, according to their 
own account, were more guilty of evil practices and 
bad conduct than the heathen nations which sur- 
rounded them. If anything could have been done 
for the Jews under the religious faculties, by their 
cultivation, they should have presented an example 
of purity nowhere to be found among all mankind. 
Yet the reverse has been the effect; they have been 
so far demented in this part of the mind, that their 
conduct, their trickery and chicanery, in all portions 
of the globe in which they have dwelt, has caused 
them to be looked upon by mankind as a distinct 
class of petty criminals. 

Egypt presents a similar example. She had thou- 
sands of priests and large quantities of religion with 
which to feed the minds of her people, yet she 
thought it no wrong to subject hundreds of thou- 
sands of human beings to a worse servitude than 
that of African slavery in America. The Hebrews 
had a foretaste of Egyptian bondage and its reality, 
after the death of Joseph; and Moses was accom- 
plished in all the learning of the priesthood in this 
land of piety. It will not do to say that the religion 
of this ancient nation was pagan and not from God, 
and therefore had no beneficial effect upon the char- 
acter of its inhabitants. If the religious code of the 
Egyptians was as true in its applications to the 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 193 

religious faculties of the mind, and as extensive in 
amount as the Mosaic, if believed, as without doubt 
it was, it would have as great effect upon the char- 
acter of its people, as it would had it come, as was 
pretended by its priesthood, directly from the hands 
of God. Yet no greater despotism ever existed than 
that of the Egyptian. All mankind in its limits were 
restrained and their liberty curtailed in the most 
humiliating manner. No contemporary people in 
ancient times, except the Israelites, had fallen to a 
lower status. This was characteristic alike of the high- 
est and the lowest classes. The rulers of this people 
conducted themselves with such cruel tyranny toward 
their subjects, that the latter would not allow the 
former to be buried in the pyramids erected by the 
kings for that special purpose. So that few, if any of 
them, have been entombed in those celebrated monu- 
ments which have survived all •the governments of 
antiquity. 

If religion have the tendencies ascribed to it by 
theologians, Egypt ought to have been, for happiness, 
a land not inferior to Paradise. AU the contrivances 
calculated to work upon the mind and make it devo- 
tional to, and dependent upon, an unseen power, 
were craftily introduced and as craftily promulgated. 
Every organic substance possessing automatic power 
was an object of worship. There was not an animal, 

IS 



194 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

reptile nor insect which was not the embodiment 
of some spirit of the gods. The priests pretended to 
have received revelations from the gods containing 
religious and moral doctrines. They pretended, also, 
to have power from above to work miracles ; this was 
firmly believed by the multitude, and vouched for hy 
the author of the Pentateuch. 

The Egyptians then had those advantages arising 
from a belief in special providences that the Christians 
now have. They did not profess one thing and believe 
another, but were really in earnest, zealously observing 
the religious commandments tauglit them by the most 
learned preceptors of their adopted faith. The priests, 
in this nation, were next in power to the crown, and, 
as a consequence, possessed an authority which gave 
them great influence over the minds of the inhabitants. 
Notwithstanding the long and close culture of the 
religious elements of the mind in this land of plenty, 
a desolation, more complete than that of Rome or of 
Greece, has swept over her; and were it not for the 
historians of contemporary nations who chronicled 
the learning and glory of this magnificent power, 
she would now be slumbering in oblivion. Her 
pyramids might still astonish the beholder, but could 
convey little information respecting the character 
and condition of the people by whom they were 
erected. From the beginning of the reign of Menes, 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 195 

A. M., 1816, to the death of Cleopatra, a period of 
twenty-one hundred years, the Egyptians enjoyed a 
constant and uninterrupted culture of the religious 
faculties of the mind. If religion and morality are 
effects of the same mental faculties, this nation should 
have enjoyed a prosperity, under the moral laws, 
unparalleled by the rest of the nations of the world. 
But she did not ; her whole history is one of crime 
and venality. She was enthusiastic in teaching relig- 
ion and propagated it day and night without cessation. 
The people were as enthusiastic in its reception and 
observances; and in proportion as the people, rich 
and poor, became more superstitious, they appeared 
to pay less attention to moral obligations, and 
sank into vices that are perfectly repugnant to our 
contemplation. By the continued application of the 
same laws of increase to the same faculty of the mind, 
generation after generation, the people were rendered 
almost perfectly superstitious and wholly control- 
lable as far as any religion will render any possible 
restraint. 

While this religious element in the masses was 
in continuity of increase by stimulation, that of the 
moral was atrophying from continued disuse. Age 
after age Egypt made application of the same laws 
to the same faculties, and consequently created a 
perfect activity in the former and a corresponding 



196 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

passivity or extinction of the latter. There is reason 
to believe that when a nation has fallen so low, 
morally, as that of the Egyptian was 1000 B. C, and 
for a long time before the subversion of her political 
establishment, it is, to say the least, next to an impos- 
sibility to revive the moral elements of the mind so as 
to give them any influence upon the character of the 
people. This may in some measure account for the 
fact, that none of those ancient states, such as Baby- 
lon, Media, Persia, Grecia and Rome, could ever be 
re-established. 

This false assumption, this erroneous doctrine, that 
the religious contains the moral, has been one of two 
of the principal causes of all of man's misfortunes, 
past and present. Individuals and nations exist and 
expire only by the natural laws. Nature, has, however, 
fixed a period at the end of which all organisms must 
cease, as far as that to which man's individuality 
relates. But there is no more necessity for this term- 
ination of a nationality, than there is that the human 
race shall altogether cease to exist. That the disap- 
pearance of the moral works an extinction of the polit- 
ical body, beyond the hope of resurrection, we shall, 
in a subsequent part of this work, attempt to show, 
together with the manner in which it has taken place. 

In order to clearly discover the religious character 
and conditional opportunities for moral conduct, 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 197 

together with, the principal events influencing both, 
it is necessary first to know about the age in which 
any given people lived, the portion of the globe which 
they inhabited, that the hereditary qualities and the 
influences of climate may be, in part, met with some- 
thing like an approximate determination. The origin, 
or something of the characteristics of ancestors, assists 
us in this investigation, for it is generally admitted 
that man not only receives certain qualities, but certain 
•degrees of quality, by hereditament. When individ- 
uals, in human affairs, observe certain events, such as 
commercial crises, repeating themselves in a periodical 
manner, they are too apt to suppose them to be opera- 
tions of the natural laws in a normal state. Statistics 
have been studied under the same regulation of 
thought. Little attention has been paid to the pres- 
ent and the primal past state, in order to ascertain 
whether man's mind is now in a normal condition or 
not. If, by a comparison of the two extremes, the 
first and the last, and if, also, by tracing the history of 
the mind, it prove to have been warped and rendered 
nugatory in some portions of its effects, it tends to 
establish that commercial crises and their kind are 
rather consequences of incautious and improvident 
states of mind, than attributable to any natural law 
controlling the human mind in a fully developed con- 
dition. l£j therefore, we are enabled to show that, by 



198 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the assumptions of divines and the sacerdocy gener- 
ally, their theological doctrines have been productive 
of a mental departure, and the mind tortured into an 
unnatural condition, it follows from it that it is unsafe 
to further rely upon their claims or calculations 

The history of all nations, in ancient times, exhib- 
its abundant evidence that, while the people were 
extremely religious, they were sunken in vices. And 
few nations afford better proof of this than the republic 
of Carthage. 

The Carthaginians were a colony of Tyrians expelled 
from their native country through political troubles in 
the royal family of the latter power. * The foundation 
of the city was attributed to a princess by the name 
of Dido. She had married Ascerbas, a man of like 
qualities as to his origin, who was murdered by the 
king of Tyre, his own brother, for the possession of 
his great riches. This caused the princess to regard 
her own life insecure, and accordingly passed out of 
the dominions of the kingdom with all the valuables 
that were portable of her husband's effects, and settled 
on the continent of Africa, on the shore of the Medi- 
terranean. She was accompanied by a few followers, 
who settled with her on the coast, secured, by this 
distance of locality, from the tyranny of modem 
Tyre. The place in which they settled had been and 



I RoLLiN's Ancient History, vol. 1, page 78. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 199 

then was the abode oT pirates. The two classes, pos- 
sessing a common dread of civilized life, were peaceful, 
and, very naturally under the circumstances, consid- 
ered the interests of the one that of the other — they 
mingled and blended the objects of their lives into one. 
Their settlement became united and formed a small 
nation, owing allegiance and paying tribute to no 
foreign government. 

Their ancestors had been and still were a nation of 
questionable merchants, the only object and satisfac- 
tion of whom appears to have been the acquisition of 
wealth. They seemed to have been actuated by no 
other motives but those of gain, and possessed of no 
feelings which elevate men above the animals of the 
earth. Their moral feelings were hardened to every 
vice, lowering the nobler sentiments of their minds 
to such a condition of subserviency to their selfish 
powers, that it gave them the capacity to commit 
any crime, however base, that contributed to satisfy 
an absorbing desire. About the only true difference 
between this commercial nation and the corsairs which 
thronged the Mediterranean, in characteristics, appears 
from the conduct of each, that the latter possessed 
sufficient honesty to declare their purpose, while the 
former did not. The pirate took the property of 
•others wrongfully, by the power of the sword, while 
the merchant of Tyre, under the garb of legitimate 



200 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

and honest trade, obtained his by perjury and fraud. 
The pirate was above denying the nature of his voca- 
tion, while the merchant constantly falsified to conceal 
his. The former was an odious and dangerous robber 
upon the high seas, while the latter was a lying thief, 
dwelling in princely residences in a capital city. The 
corsair squandered the spoils of his unlawful gain, 
while the accumulations of the merchant rusted and 
corroded in his own possession. The merchant with 
his money fitted out ships to prey upon the commerce 
of nations, receiving the spoils due to him under the 
contract, while the pirate underwent the hazard and 
encountered the disgrace which attached to the char- 
acter of an outlaw. 

Yet both were equally religious, bowing before the 
same shrine, and, with due reverence, worshiping the 
same gods. At this time Polytheism or Feticism pre- 
vailed, except among the Jews, throughout the entire 
earth. Both outlaw and merchant, back to an inde- 
finite period, had possessed the advantages of religious 
educations. For more than a thousand years they 
had been taught by their clerical instructors, thou 
shalt not steal, nor charge usury, nor lie, nor rob, 
and all the rest of the catalogue of moral virtues, by 
religious teachers. ^ Yet it had little or no effect upon 



2 "For there is, unquestionably, notliingto be found in the world which 
has undergone so little change as those great dogmas of which moral systems 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 201 

them. The more they worshiped, the worse, morally, 
they seemed to become. The constant appearance of 
the marvelous rendered their minds superstitious, and 
they believed in special providential interventions. 

They constantly prayed to benevolent deities to 
purify their wicked hearts. They offered up sacri- 
fices, both animal and human, to appease the wrath 
of the gods and balance them in the petitioners' favor. 
They constantly reminded these worshipful beings of 
the shortcomings of mortality and their own wishes 
to become just. Yet all this address of religion was 
wholly unable to even preserve this nation to the 
principles of virtue, and she continued to descend 
into repugnant vices, until she was destroyed by 
those very laws which she had set at defiance. 



are composed. To do good to others ; to sacrifice for their own benefit your 
best wishes; to love your neighbor as yourself; to forgive your enemy; to 
restrain your passions; to honor your parents; to respect those who are set 
over you ; but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot 
or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies and text-books 
which moralists and theologians have been able to produce. 

" That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained 
no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the 
most beautiful passages in the Apostolic writings are quotations from pagan 
authors, is well known to every scholar ; and so far from supplying, as some 
suppose, an objection against Christianity, it is a strong recommendation of 
it, as indicative of the intimate relation between the doctrines of Christ and 
the moral sympathies of mankind in different ages. But to assert that Chris- 
tianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues, on 
the part of the asserter, either gross ignorance or willful fraud. For evidence 
of the knowledge of moral truths was possessed by barbarians independently of 
Christianity, and for the most part previously to its promulgation."— BtJCKLE'B 
History of Civilization in ENOiiAND, vol. 1, page 129. See also note at 
bottom of same page. 



202 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Wealth purchased about everything. It purchased 
influential friends, who endorsed the vilest of indi- 
vidual acts, or firmly denied them. The best or 
vrorst social communities took persons to their con- 
fidence, into the bosom of their association, and beset 
them with the foulest of flattery, if they possessed 
this one element of consideration. But however 
much that society may have endeavored to make the 
initiated forget his vices and shield them from the 
public gaze, they could not be obscured nor with- 
drawn from the retrospection of his own conscience. 
He therefore was accompanied through life with a 
strong feeling of disquietude, lessening the effect of 
that noble merit, under which, by the full enjoyment 
of the moral powers, the individual possessor was 
impressed. Although he did not always carry with 
him a distinct knowledge of the cause of this effect, 
he was nevertheless justly degraded in that self esti- 
mation, that firm and satisfactory moral courage 
which God designed should be the reward of the 
virtuous. After this self respect was thus once lost, 
however little known to the outside world, the person 
was fully conscious of his own inner fall and did not 
hesitate at the commission of other crimes, if they 
came not too suddenly into broad contrast with public 
reproval and his own incipient degeneration. 

But the moment that fortune frowned — ^the moment 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



that that individual had more of an appearance of 
want than of wealth, however virtuous and intel- 
lectual he may have been — that very society which 
received him with such polished and flattering 
addresses, no longer deemed his social qualities 
worthy of tlie least attention, and probably denied, by 
non-recognition or similar acts, that it ever knew him. 
Like the savages of Africa, he was no longer possessed 
of those bone ornaments of the nose ; he had lost those 
accumulations of material objects which were signifi- 
cant consequences of his untutored associates. He, 
perhaps, was unable to tattoo his skin after the most 
approved style of the leading savages of his tribe. 

All these things predominated in the social world 
2000 B. C. ; and from the founding of modern Tyre to 
its conquest by Alexander, even down to the day of 
the excision of Carthage, the only method of measur- 
ing one's respectability was by the length of his purse. 
From that day to this the above, among other sys- 
tems of corruptions, both generated by ignorance and 
superstition, have been repeating themselves. Every 
nation that has ever existed, has been compelled to 
pass through them all on its highway to its fall. It is 
not necessary, we apprehend, that the whole population 
of a government should be subjected to the corrupt- 
ing processes which have been here enunciated. Yet 
when a nation is so far lost to all moral considerations, 



204 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

that a majority of its inhabitants seek nothing but 
wealth, official distinction, social pre-eminence, and 
the vain official exaltation of individual self, there is 
reason to believe that the united power of the nation 
is departed, and that it is rapidly approaching a period 
not far distant at which the top of the edifice of its 
political fabric will be prostrated to the base. 

These ancients were no children; they could see 
into the character of their passing predecessors by 
daily acts. They witnessed all these barbarous prin- 
ciples carried out in detail. Their gold was their 
power; with it the souls and bodies of men and 
women could be purchased and in great part con- 
trolled. These all had their direct influences in 
expunging morality from the mind of the Tyrians, 
the only basis upon which human happiness and per- 
manent prosperity can be reposed. It matters not, 
however, in the result, whether the descent from a 
moral position to one of inner mental turpitude, be 
wrought in a den of outlaws or in the polished cir- 
cles of society. The one may be rough and uncouth 
in his appearance, while the other is what is erro- 
neously called refined; but both are alike barbarous 
in their feelings and destitute of all moral principles. 
It was from such elements of depravity that the Car- 
thaginians derived their origin. 

* Carthage existed a little over seven hundred 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 305 

years. It was destroyed under the consulate of C. 
Lentulus and L. Mummius, the 603d year of Rome, 
3859th of the world, and 145th before Christ. The 
foundation of it may therefore be fixed in the year 
of the world 3158, when Joasli was king of Judah, 
98 years before the building of Rome, and 846 before 
our Saviour." 3 

Babylon, Assyria, Media, Persia, Greece and Rome 
were the principal contemporary nations with Car- 
thage. There were smaller states in Asia and Africa, 
not far distant from the boundaries of the Carthaginian 
republic, upon which, without any just cause, she 
made war and subjected to tributary provinces, to 
subserve her own interests and to aggrandize her own 
power. Whatever nation upon the Mediterranean 
escaped the avarice of Tyre in the east, most invari- 
ably fell into the hands of this piratical republic of 
the west. She began her national career by pur- 
chasing the territory over which she exercised the 
jurisdiction of government. Its value was trusted to 
her honesty, the payment of which she soon after 
exhibited her worthiness to confidence by wholly 
refusing to satisfy the demands. By the breach of 
this contract a war, the inevitable consequence, 
under such circumstances, with independent powers, 
followed, in which the Carthaginians were defeated 
and compelled to execute their agreement, but not 

3 RouuN's Ancient Histobt, toI. 1, page 78. 



206 HISTOET OF THE DECLENSION. 

till after a severe trial at arms, the desolation of 
their country and the subjection of their forces. A 
just penalty of death to many of her citizens, and 
financial distress to the whole nation, was in this 
manner visited upon her for her perfidy. Thus the 
beginning of her intercourse with independent nation- 
alities was marked by a treachery which she sealed 
with her blood, and forever afterward stamped the 
character of the nation as one of bad faith alike to 
friends and to foes. 

She then carried war into the dominions of Numidia 
and Mauritania, ostensibly for the purposes of spoil 
and to acquire that military skill of which, in her first, 
she was wholly destitute. After thus replenishing her 
treasury and possessing herself of this knowledge in 
other fields against unoS'ending powers, she turned 
her arms against her benefactor, and blotted out her 
indebtedness with the blood and bondage of her cred- 
itors. After having finished her wars of subjection 
of the surrounding nationalities, her armies are next 
found in wars of conquest of the independent cities 
of the sea and the smaller principalities of Spain. 

After having thus far introduced the political organ- 
ization of that people, whose character, both religious 
and moral, we design to trace, we shall endeavor to 
prove their great piety, and, after that, the continued 
degeneracy of the most important part of their mental 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 207 

being. But, as is well known to scholars, the litera- 
ture of Carthage having been lost so that scarcely any 
of its remains have come down to us, and none at all 
which bears any relation to the history of the customs 
and usages of the people, we shall be compelled to 
rely upon the integrity of writers of contemporary 
states. And as the republics of Rome and Carthage 
were the most extensive and enterprising powers of 
antiquity ; as they were nearly the same in the con- 
struction of their political governments ; as they were 
nations of aggression and conquest ; as they were sit- 
uated very nearly in the same longitudinal portion 
of the globe ; as the dominions of the one were in 
proximity to the other ; in fine, as they bore a great 
resemblance to each other in almost every particular, 
there is reason to believe from analogy that the relig- 
ious proclivity of the one was almost a facsimile of 
the other. It is, therefore, by tracing the history of 
the religious acts of the Romans during their war with 
the Carthaginians — ^the second great contest between 
these powers for universal empire, and that one, too, 
which, begun under such favorable aspects for the 
Carthaginians, even threatening the subversion of 
Rome, ended by the subordination of all northern 
Africa to the valorous arms of Europe — that we expect 
to impress on the mind of the reader the extreme relig- 
ious feelings that swayed the people of this ancient 



208 llISTOliY OF THE DECLENSION. 

state. If the inhabitants of the two states were very 
nearly alike in their mental habits in other respects, it 
is tolerably safe to conclude that they were equally so 
in religion. A brief recital of the daily piety and 
superstition of the Romans may, therefore, throw 
much light on that of the Carthaginians.* 

The second Punic war was, perhajDS, the most 
remarkable that has ever taken place, as not only 
the sovereignty of the world was the reward of the 
conqueror, but also servile bondage and political 
extinction to the defeated. Upon such conditions it 
was that Carthage and Rome took up arms, and 
although the manner of its termination was of the 
utmost importance to the parties involved, its dura- 
tion was still more so to that portion of mankind 
which was destined by nature to follow them in suc- 
cession. To their benighted minds the culmination of 
all human glory, or direst disaster, was to follow as a 



4 On discussion by analogy, a very able author has observed : " There 
can be no doubt that every Lsuch] resemblance which can be pointed out 
between B and A, affords some degree of probability, beyond what would 
otherwise exist, in favor of the conclusion drawn from it. If B resembled 
A in all its ultimate properties, its possessing the attribute m would be a 
certainty, not a probability and every resemblance which can be shown to 
exist between them, places it by so much nearer to that point. If the 
resemblance be in an ultimate property, there will be resemblance in all the 
derivative properties dependent on that ultimate property, and of these m 
may be one. If the resemblance be a derivative property, there is reason to 
expect resemblance in the ultimate property on which it depends, and in 
the other derivative properties dependent upon the same ultimate property. 
Every resemblance which can be shown to exist, affords grounds for expect- 
ing an indefinite number of other resemblances."— John Sxuaet MilIi's 
System of Logic, page 833. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 209 

result, and the sequel fully indicates, as calamity and 
good fortune alternately shook the courage and flat- 
tered the hopes of the North and the South, it did also 
increase the zest for religious ceremonies of those two 
states, among citizens at home and abroad. In either 
event with them, as it has ever had a tendency with 
all mankind, it proved fatal to the liberties of both ; 
those evU passions which the contest generated finally 
overturned their freedom, and whatever might be the 
appearance of the government of either in its liberal 
formation, it succeeded in removing the only true 
foundation of mortal greatness. 

It is then by following the bloody trail of devasta- 
ting armies in the territories of each of these hostile 
nations, that we discover a partial exhibition of the 
religion of its, people. History, unfortunately for us, 
has not been written in such manner as to give enquir- 
ers the best instruction from facts for our guidance 
in the future ; and we are thereupon forced to search 
through many and various authors of those and sub- 
sequent times, and thus snatch our information of facts 
from sources in which they appear to be concealed. 

During the first Punic war the sovereignty of the 
sea and the control of Sicily had by each been alter- 
nately regained and lost. A war begun by accident 
or jealousy, and probably without the design of lead- 
ing to a regular war on the part of either, grew into an 

14 



210 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION". 

acrimonioiis conflict of twenty-four years' dnration, 
ceasing only when both parties were grown gray and 
weary of a burden whose demands had drained the 
contending powers of their money and the ablest of 
their men. The rivalry, the hatred, of the two nation r. 
were here generated, with all the force that external 
influence is capable of producing upon the inner man. 
Its continuance was sufficiently long for the feelings 
of bitterness to reach and enthrone themselves on the 
soul of every member of each of these great republics. 
So perfectly had this been wrought, that the highest 
families of Carthage and Rome, those whose intelli- 
gence enabled them to control, in great measure, the 
government of the countries to which they respect- 
ively belonged, had become as embittered as the slaves 
or mercenaries whom they bought and sold. The feel- 
ings of revenge were then not only exercised by the 
weak and base, but by the high and powerful also. 
It was this spirit in the Barcine family and faction 
that first began the attack upon the allies of the 
Romans and then caused an invasion of their terri- 
tories. This last conduct on the part of their leading 
military commander was, shortly after the taking of 
Saguntum, ratified by the republic of the south, and 
thereupon became a national act. After the last effort 
on the part of the Romans for a maintenance of peace, 
and its failure, both parties, with the characteristics 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 211 

and alacrity of tigers, each, intent on the destruction of 
the other, sprang to arms. During seventeen years 
those two powers exerted every effort which nature 
had given them, and, under the action of their wild 
and superstitious minds, endeavored to disturb the 
peace of the gods, by offerings of sacrifices and of 
gold, to purchase a division and thus engage the 
heavens in contention on earth in the affairs of men. 
Such were the feelings of rich and poor, high and 
low, free and slave, of both at the beginning of the 
second Punic war. 

We have before observed that our only enquiry by 
this chapter is to discover the condition of the religious 
faculties of the mind, by the manifestation of their 
effects among the Carthaginians, and then to contrast 
whatever we find this to have been with their actual 
moral status. This we do for the removal of an old 
obstacle, an ecclesiastical error, as current to-day as 
it ever was, and stands in the way, we feel, of all 
moral progress. By the assumptions of it, divines 
have affirmed and publicly taught, from their pulpits 
and works of letters, that it is the only salvation of 
men, of society and of civilized governments, when it 
has been one of several causes of the destruction of 
them all. And so long have these facts hung over the 
minds of mankind, and the most intelligent witness- 
ing the utter inefficiency of it to meet the requirements 



212 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSIOK. 

of its earnest claims, that many, disconnected to relig- 
ion, have been driven to the other extreme, and in the 
abstract, and also in perfect disconsolation, endorsed 
the theological doctrine of man' s total depravity. Bnt 
some of the most comprehensive portions, with more 
elastic hopes, have been unwilling to surrender man 
back into that darkness in which this barbarous and 
atheistic idea would place him.^ 

Years before the beginning of the second war, the 
die was cast, and the fate of Carthage was sealed. 
Hamilcar, after the close of the African war, conceived 
the plan to extinguish the Romans, In him, hatred 
found no repose, and so enthusiastic was he in his 
feelings and the execution of his plot, that he engaged 
in a life labor to subject all Spain by arms and the arts 
of intrigues, that it might serve as a base from which 
to draw his supplies of money and mercenaries. But 
as life is short and his undertakings great, wishing 
above all things to extend the calamities of his ene- 
mies, and desirous, also, in case of his own failure, to 

5 The New and the Old Testament contain moral commandments, but 
they were addressed to the moral sentiments and not to the religious. 
Because religion and morals were taught by devout personages, subsequent 
ecclesiastics confounded the operations of both, supposing that the latter 
emanated from the former. But religious lawgivers held two positions, the 
one upon religion, the other upon morals ; and it appears evident to us that It 
was designed to be left to man to so independently develop the primitive 
causes of each that he can obey the Injunctions of both. Divines claim that 
individuals experiencing religious convictions and repentance are instantly 
reversed in disposition of moral evil, without undergoing any farther disci- 
p'inc of the moral sentiments, thus holding that every moral good arises from 
the spiritual feelings. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION". 213 

produce tlie effect of his scheme, he designedly trans- 
mitted his animosity to the succeeding generation 
of his own family. When about to set out on his 
expedition to Spain, and was offering sacrifices to the 
gods of war, he caused his son Hannibal "to lay his 
hand on the consecrated victim," and by oath bind 
himself in solemn obligations to the gods, that he 
would ever be a vindictive enemy of the Romans.® 
It appears, from all that we can learn, that Hamilcar 
vv^as strictly devoted to the religion of his country, and 
by this act of his we see that he durst not set out on 
his adventure without first making supplications to the 
gods ; a combination of piety and animal resentment. 
A war thus begun by the hatred which the Carthagin- 
ians bore to the people of Rome, was not counteracted 
by piety nor restrained in the least by religious 
obligations, but, on the contrary, was the instrument 
by which it was rendered more inveterate, having 
given it the solemn sanction of its imposing ceremo- 
nies. Hamilcar, however, did not live to carry the war 



6 That the ablest men of Carthage, and those, too, which were the best 
educated, were religious to a scrupulous degree, the following produces some 
evidence In its support: ""We are told that when Hamilcar was about to 
march at the head of an army into Spain, after conclusion of the war in 
Africa," [also after the first Punic war,] "and was offering sacrifices on the 
occasion," [to Hercules,] "his son Hannibal, then about nine years of age, 
solicited him, with boyish fondness, to take him with him, whereon he 
brought him up to the altars, and compelled him to lay his hand on the 
consecrated victim, and swear, that, as soon it should be in his power, he 
would show himself an enemy to the Roman people."— SPiiiLAN's Transla- 
tion ov IdYY, lib. 21, oh. 1. 



214 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

into the dominions of his foes, for the same animal 
resentment which he manifested toward Rome was 
exercised upon him. The command of the armies 
then fell to his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, and after eight 
years from the death of the father, it was, by the 
unanimous voice of the army and the vote of the 
senate, conferred upon his son Hannibal. 

The Carthaginians and Romans entered into no 
obligations nor enterprises, without first offering sacri- 
fices to the proper divinities, keeping fasts and feasts, 
also other religious ceremonies which, as they sup- 
posed, were necessary to the good will of the gods — ^in 
other words, to purchase their favor, treating them as 
articles of public barter. So, therefore, when any dis- 
aster or important event was impending, or about to 
be undertaken, the sacred oracles, among the Romans, 
must read the Sibylline books, and interpret the proph- 
ecies which they contained. It was also necessary that 
the manner in which birds took their flight, be taken 
into consideration; and that the aruspice examine 
the entrails of animals, there to discover the gene- 
ral or particular nature of the event which they, 
good or evil, never failed to portend. An appear- 
ance of war alike increased their fears, their courage, 
and the darkness of their superstition. As the enemy 
against which the Romans had to contend, after the 
taking of Saguntum, was under the personal control 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 215 

of one of the greatest and most experienced officers 
that had ever appeared in the field to compete for the 
glory of empire, they were greatly wrought upon by 
their fears and superstition. Before it was known at 
Rome that Hannibal had crossed the Alps, the armies 
of the two nations were confronting each other, the 
Roman under the command of Scipio, on the banks 
of the rivers Po and Ticinus. But an invasion under 
the direction of Hannibal, a man of the greatest repu- 
tation, for no other ostensible object but the conquest 
of Rome, was one of deep interest and importance to 
the metropolis of Europe. Scipio had dispatched 
one-half of the army, the veterans, to Spain, under 
the command of his brother, and hence the troops 
which he had under his immediate orders, were raw 
recruits from the ranks of civilians, who were fresh 
from the religious instruction of their clerical masters. 
As the armies drew their lines toward each other to 
engage for the possession of Italy, we are told that two 
wonderful prodigies'' occurred, which caused fear to 
seize the soldiers, and in the battle which followed, 
the Roman army suffered almost an entire overthrow. 
But the advance of Hannibal was rapid, and those 



7 LivY, in speaking of the hesitancy of the Romans to engage, observes: 
"By no means bo great alacrity prevailed among the Romans, who, in addi- 
tion to other causes, were also alarmed by recent prodigies ; for both a wolf 
had entered the camp, and, having torn those who met him, had escaped 
unhurt ; and a swarm of bees had lit on a tree overhanging the consul's 
tent."— SpiLr.AN'8 Translation of LrvT, lib. 21, sec. 46. A. U. C. 534. 



216 HISTORY OP THE DEOLENSION. 

men of the northern republic who had been accustomed 
to look upon a close engagement as a sure defeat to the 
Carthaginians, were overthrown in every battle by the 
extraordinary abilities of this great master. No such 
captain had ever appeared in Europe, and after the 
third great battle, near Placentia, his merit as a soldier 
was raised above that of any which had ever existed. 
Two consular armies had been defeated in desperate 
engagements ; and when the Roman people found they 
could not rely on their former strength, their invincible 
armies, and there was no hope on earth, the mind of 
the people inclined to its customary dependence on 
the gods above. Everything was magnified into an 
omen, auguring destruction to the state and enslave- 
ment to its inhabitants. Under the apprehension of 
pressing danger and the religious notions of the 
Romans, in the great city and vicinity several prod- 
igies were reported, which threw the capital and 
country into consternation.^ 



8 At the capital and its surrounding neighborhood we are informed that 
several supernatural occurrences took place which betokened no minor 
calamities to the inhabitants of the nation. It was reported that " an infant 
in a respectable family, and only six months old, in the herb market, had 
spolien out, ' lo triumphe ' ; that in the cattle market an ox had, of his own 
accord, mounted up to the third story of a house, when, being affrighted by 
the noise and bustle of the Inhabitants, he threw himself down ; that a light 
had appeared in the sky in the form of ships ; that the temple of Hope, in the 
herb market, was struck by lightning ; that at Lanuvium the spear of Juno 
had shaken of itself ; and that a crow had flown into the temple of Juno and 
pitched on the very couch ; that in the district of Amlternum, in many places, 
apparitions of men in white garments had been seen at a distance, but had 
not come close to anybody: that in Picenum a shower of stones had fallen; 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION-. 217 

With the advance of Hannibal the religious feelings 
of the Romans appeared to be reduplicated. In the 
year of Rome 635, the second year of the war, and just 
before the battle fought on the banks of Lake Trasi- 
menus, the minds of the people of Italy were greatly 
startled and terrified by the ominous prodigies through 
which the ill-disposed gods were, in their peculiar way, 
foreshadowing calamities to the Roman state.* Con- 
sidering the length of the first war, together with tlie 



at Caere the divining ticliets had diminished in size; in Gaul a wolf had 
snatched the sword of a soldier on guard out of the scabbard, and run away 
with it. With respect to the other prodigies, the decemvirs were commanded 
to consult the books," [Sibylline,] " but on account of the shower of stones in 
Picenum, the nine days' festival was ordered to be celebrated, and the expiat- 
ing of the rest, one after the other, was almost the sole occupation of the 
state. In the first place was performed a purification of the city; victims of 
the greater kinds were offered to such gods as were pointed out by directions. 
An offering of forty pounds weight of gold was carried to the temple of Juno 
at Lanuvium, and the matrons dedicated a brazen statue to Juno on the Aven- 
tine. A lectisternium was ordered at Casre, where the divining tickets had 
diminished, also a supplication to fortune at Algidum. At Rome, likewise, a 
lectisternium was ordered in honor of the goddess Youth, and a supplication to 
be performed by individuals at the temple of Hercules, and then by the whole 
body of the people at all the several shrines. To Genius five of the greater 
victims wore offered ; and the pretor Caius Atilius Seranus was ordered to vow 
certain perf(.rmances, in case the commonwealth should continue for ten 
years in its present state. These expiations and vows being performed in 
conformity +o the directions of the Sibylline books, people's minds were, in 
good measure, relieved from the burden of religious apprehension."— A. 17. 
C. 534 ; Baker's Translation of Livy, vol. 2, page 286. 

9 " Prodigies announced from many places at the same time augmented 
the terror: in Sicily, that several darts belonging to the soldiers had taken 
fire; and in Sardinia, that the staff of a horseman, who was going his rounds, 
took fire as he held it in liis hand ; that the shores had blazed frequently 
with fires; that two shields had sweated blood at Pra3neste; that red-hot 
stones had fallen from the heavens at Arpl ; that shields were seen in the 
heavens, and the sun fighting with the moon, at Capena; that two moons rose 
in the daytime; that the waters of Casre had flowed mixed with blood; and 
even the fountain of Hercules had flowed sprinkled with spots of blood ; in 
the territory of Antium, that bloody ears of com had fallen into the basket 



218 IIISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

extraordinary exertions and expenditures which the 
state was forced to make, and the almost continual 
wars which the Gauls and neighboring tribes were, 
during the interval of peace, waging against Rome, 
there could have been nothing but depleted treasuries 
and impoverished peoples at the commencement of the 
second Punic war. Grold and silver were less plenty 
then than now, as also were the productions of 



as they were reaping; at Falerii, that the heavens appeared cleft as if with 
a great cliasm, and when it had opened a vast light had shone forth ; that the 
prophetic tablets had spontaneously become less, and that one had fallen out 
thus inscribed, 'Mars brandishes his spear;' during the same time, that the 
statue of Mars at Rome, on the Appian Way, had sweated at the sight of the 
images of the wolves; at Capua, that there had been the appearance of the 
heavens being on flre, and of the moon as falling among rain. After these, 
credit was given to prodigies of less magnitude: that the goats of certain 
persons had borne wool; that a hen had changed herself into a cock, and a 
cock into a hen. These things having been laid before the senate as reported, 
the autliors being conducted into the senate house, the consul took the sense 
of the fathers on religious affairs. It was decreed that those prodigies sliould 
be expiated, partly with full-grown victims, partly with sucking victims, and 
that a supplication should be made at every shrine for the space of three 
days; that the other things should be done accordingly as the gods should 
declare in their oracles to be agreeable to them all, when the decemviri had 
examined the books. By the advice of the decemviri it was decreed, first, that 
a golden thunderbolt of fifty pounds weight should be made as an offering 
to Jupiter ; that offerings of silver should be presented to Juno and Minerva; 
that sacrifices of full-grown victims should be offered to Juno Regina on the 
Aventine, and to Juno Sospita at Lanuvium ; that the matrons, contributing 
as much money as might be convenient to each, should carry it to the 
Aventine as a present to Juno Regina ; and that a lectisternium should be 
celebrated. Moreover that the very freedmen should, according to their 
means, contribute money from which a present might be made to Fiorina. 
When these things were done, the decemviri sacrificed with the larger 
victims in the forum at Ardea. Lastly, it being now the month of December, 
a sacrifice was made at the temple of Saturn at Rome, and a lectisternium 
ordered, in which senators prepared the couch and a public banquet. Procla- 
mation was made through tiie city that the Saturnalia should be kept for a 
day and a night ; and the people were commanded to account that day as a 
holiday-, and observe it forever."— Spillan's TBAifSLATiON of Livr, vol. 2, 
pages 76-77. 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 219 

agriculturists. The earth had not then become a subject 
of scientific enquiry. But, as we have seen by our 
authority above, their absurd superstition continually 
disarmed them by foolishly squandering those means 
by which alone a nation can, in times of war, be 
strengthened and supported. In this age, at Rome, 
almost as much as at Carthage, money had well nigh 
become the chief pursuit of man. In Africa this was 
man's highest aim, for by it all honors were obtain- 
able; in Europe it was very similar, rapidly coming 
up to a condition by which it would eventually absorb 
every other passion, but had not yet reached the 
degree of importance of a perfect supremacy. And, 
therefore, when we consider the tenacious greed which 
miserly tendencies in the human mind produce for 
whatever relates to wealth, and the release of these 
strongest passions of the soul in favor of imaginary 
divinities, it is conclusive evidence that the religious 
faculties have become stronger, in thus controling the 
passions of man, than those faculties which are the 
immediate and connected antecedents of the feelings 
for pearls and diamonds. 

It cannot be charged to the nation at large that the 
ignorant multitude alone were superstitious, for it is 
mentioned by Livy that after the battle of Trasimenus 
and the defeat of the Roman army, the most intelli- 
gent senators of the state attributed the loss of victoiy 



220 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

to Cains Flaminius' neglect to consnlt the auspices 
and to his skepticism of religions ceremonies. This 
historian alleges that Fabins (at the time dictator) 
distinctly proved it to be owing wholly to Flamin- 
ius' great indifference to significant omens, by which 
the gods retailed future prosperities and misfortunes 
to the inhabitants of earth. *° That the last great 
disaster to the national forces was wholly due to 
the irreligion of Flaminins, was then the determ- 
ined judgment of both patricians and commons. 
And an impartial historian of the times avers, not 
in words but in substance, that the Romans were 
extremely religious, and this, too, without exception 
of classes or conditions. ^ ^ Flaminius was one of 



lo "Quintus Fablus Maximus, a second time dictator, assembled the 
senate tiie very day he entered on his office, and commencing with what 
related to tha gods, after ho had distinctly proved to the fathers that Cuius 
Flaminius had erred more from neglect of the ceremonies and auspices than 
from temerity and want of judgment, and that the gods themselves should 
be consulted as to what were the expiations of their anger, he obtained a 
resolution that the decemviri should be ordered to inspect the Sibylline 
books, which is rarely decreed, except when some horrid prodigies were 
announced. Haying inspected the prophetic books, they reported that the 
vow which was made to Mare on account of this war, not having been 
regulary fulfilled, must be performed afresh and more fully ; that the great 
Camea must be vowed to Jupiter, temples to Venus Erycina and Mars ; that a 
supplication and lectlstemium must be made, and a sacred spring vowed, if 
the war should proceed favorably and the state continue in the condition it 
was before the war."— Spillan's Translation op Livy, vol. 2, page 87. 

XI Just tef ore the battle of Cannae, which almost completed the entire con- 
quest of liome, contemplating the proneness of the Romans to acccept pagan 
ecclesiastical Imposture as consequences of divine will, a philosophic histo- 
rian observes c " When it was known at Rome that the armies were encamped 
in sight, and that frequent skirmishes happened every day between them, the 
whole city was filled with agitation and concern. For the people were so 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 221 

the very few who was not devoted to the religion of 
Polytheism. It is almost impossible to reciir to any 
period of the second Punic war, without finding the 
minds of the inhabitants distracted by fear that tlie 
gods had become angry and taken sides against them 
in favor of their enemy. 

When the people had recovered from their last 
reverse, at lake Trasimenus, having recruited eighty- 
seven thousand soldiers, by which to oppose the 
destructive progress of Hannibal, they were still, not- 
withstanding the prosperous condition of their affairSj 
greatly agitated by fears in consequence of several 
prodigies which had then recently occurred. *2 And 
when Hannibal was unable to entrap the consul 
Paulus iEmilius, just before the battle of Cannse, and 

much dejected by their remembrance of former defeats and losses, they 
seemed now to apprehend the worst that could befall them, and to anticipate 
in their own minds all the fatal consequences of an entire defeat. The oracles 
of their sacred books were repeated in every mouth. Every temple and every 
house was filled with prodigies and portents, which gave occasion to innu- 
merable vows ixnd prayers and supplicatory sacrifices. For In times of danger 
or distress, the Romans take universal pains to appease the wrath of the gods 
and men ; and thinking nothing -sordid or dishonorable that is employed in 
that design."— Hampton's Polybius, vol. 1, lib. 3, page 310. 

12 " Before, however, the new-raiaed legions marched from the city, the 
decemvirs were ordered to have recourse to and inspect the sacred volumes, 
on account of persons having been greatly alarmed by extraordinary prodi- 
gies ; for intelligence was brought that it had rained stones on the Aventine 
at Rome and at Aricia at the same time ; that among the Sabines, statues, 
had sweated copiously, and at Cjere the waters had flowed warm from the 
fountain. The latter prodigy excited a greater degree of alarm, because it 
had frequently occurred. In a street Called the Arched Way, near the Campu:- 
Martius, several men were struck by lightning and killed. These prodigies 
were expiated according to the books." — SPii/iiiN's Tbakslation of LivTi 
Ub. 2Z, cb. 36. 



222 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

retreated, the chickens of the consul were portentous 
of adversity to his own forces, and, if we may believe 
the historian of Rome, it was the means by which the 
worthless Terrentius Yarro was restrained from ante- 
dating the calamities of Cannse. * ' With the increase 
of misfortunes there appeared to be a revival of the 
cruel rites of the Roman religion. Two priestesses 
had violated the obligations of their sacred office;** 
this gave fresh apprehension of impending evil. After 
the disaster at the village of Cannse, Hannibal marched 
against the town of N'ola, and there fought a battle for 
the possession of the place. Here he met successful 
opposition, the first defeat which he had suffered 
during the war by Marcus Claudius Marcellus. After 
this, their first victory over Hannibal, the citizens of 

13 "Paulus, whom, unwilling from his own suggestions to move, the 
chickens had not encouraged by their auspices, ordered the unlucliy omen to- 
be reported to his colleague, when he was now leading the troops out of the 
gate. And though V;irro bore it impatiently, yet the recent discomfiture of 
Flaminius, and the recorded naval defeat of Claudius, the consul in the first 
Punic war, struck religious scruples into his mind."— SpiLiiAN'S TransIiATION 
OF LrvY, ch. 43. 

14 After the battle of Cannas, in which two consular armies were lost, 
the people were less affected by it than they were "by several prodigies; and 
particularly by two vestals, Opimia and Floronia, being convicted of inconti- 
nence; one of them was, according to custom, buried alive near the'CoUine 
gate ; the other voluntarily put an end to her own life. The decemvirs. were 
ordered to consult the books. Quintus Fabius Pictor was sent also to Delphi 
to consult the oracle, and discover by what supplications and worship they 
might be able to appease the gods, and by what means a stop might be put to 
such a heavy train of misfortunes. Meanwhile, according to the directions of 
the books of the fates, several extraordinary sacrifices were performed ; among 
which a male and female Gaul, and a male and female Greek, were burifd alive 
in the cattle market in a vault built round with stones; a place which had 
already, by a practice abhorrent from the religion of Rome, been polluted with 
human victims."— Ibid., lib. 23, ch. 57. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 223 

Rome desired to reward the valor and great abilities 
of Claudiiis by elevating him to the consulate. But, 
when, after his election, he entered upon the duties of 
the office to discharge them, it thundered, whereupon 
the patricians reported and declared that it was a 
manifest displeasure of the gods, at the election of two 
plebian consuls at the same time In consequence of 
it Claudius resigned, the only man at all competent to 
discharge the duties of that high office against so 
distinguished an enemy. Thunder was not all that 
at this time frightened the Romans, and caused them 
to earnestly desire the resignation of one of the con- 
suls. At the time it thundered it was reported that 
the sea appeared to be on fire ; and at Linnessa a cow 
had given birth to a colt ; at Lanuvium the statues in 
the temple of Juno Sospita had sweated with blood ; 
and in the vicinity of the same place stones had fallen 
instead of rain. There were many other prodigies, 
the report of which has not reached us ; and on all 
these the Romans wasted nine days by stupidly expi- 
ating them,^^ while the Carthaginians were ranging 
through the country committing all to the flames. 
This was in the year of Rome 537 ; the following year 
they were again frightened by several ominous prodi- 
gies, which, if no more to them, indicated clearly the 
position, or the sympathy, of the gods in this contest 



IS SpHjIiAN's TRAnai/ATiON OF Lmr, lib. 83, ch. 30. 



224 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of continents. Crows had made a nest in tlie temple 
of Jnno Sospita at Lanuvium ; a green palm tree had 
of its own accord taken fire in Apulia ; an eddy of one 
of the rivers had changed its color to that of blood ; at 
Gales chalk had fallen, as also had blood in showers 
in the cattle market of the city of Rome; a fountain 
underground in the street Istrian of the great city had 
flowed with such force as to carry away the butts and 
casks near it ; that one of the courts in the city had 
been struck by lightning, as had also the temple of 
Vulcan in the Campus Martins; a tree and a stone 
wall had been visited by the same power ; the spear 
of Mars at Preeneste moved to and fro without being 
caused by any visible assistance ; and an altar in one 
of the provinces was seen in the heavens surrounded 
by the spirits of dead men ; a swarm of bees having 
made their way into the forum caused, by its alarm, 
the arming of the multitude; armed legions were 
seen at Janiculum, when in reality none were there ; 
at Spoletum a woman had been transformed into a 
man ; in the womb of its mother a child had cried out, 
"lo triumphe!" and in Sicily an ox had spoken 
instead of an ass.^^ 

In the year of Rome 539, a stone wall and the 
temple of Jupiter had been struck by lightning; 
ships had been seen on a certain river, when it was 

l6 SPIUiAN'S TBAN8IM.TION OF LlVY, lib. 24, Ch. 10. 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 226 

well known by all in its vicinity that none were on it ; 
arms had been heard to clash in the temple of Jupiter 
Vicilinus, and one of the rivera had changed its appear- 
ance to that of blood. ^ "^ After having expiated those 
prodigies, the generals who were to protect the realm 
set out to expel the enemy from the heart of Italy. 

In the year of A. U. C. 540, B. C. 212, in and about 
the capital more prodigies occurred, and were readUy 
believed by the superstitious Romans, by all classes 
high and low. A shower of stones had fallen for two 
days without intermission on the Alban Mount ; seve- 
ral buildings had been struck by lightning ; a rampart 
was struck, and by it two soldiers were killed ; walls 
and several towers at Cumse were demolished ; a great 
rock had been seen to fly about in the air; and the 
sun appeared red as though it had turned to blood. 
Several days were occupied by the highest officers of 
the state in expiating them, using up large sums of 
money in the necessary religious ceremonies and many 
cattle, when the treasury of the republic was in a con- 
dition of bankruptcy, and the army almost destitute 
of provisions. ^ ^ 

In this year, after the taking of Tarrentum, it 
became a question of considerable propriety regard- 
ing the religious ceremonies, which, to all classes, 

17 Spiixan's Translation of Livy, lib. 24, ch. 44. 
i3 Ibid., lib. 25, ch. 7. 
16 



226 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

appeared necessary by the extraordinary prophecies 
of Marcius, who, as the historian informs us, was a 
distinguished soothsayer. It was known that one of 
his prophetic utterances had been fulfilled to tlio 
utmost anticipation of the most devout. And a great 
misfortune it was to the welfare of Rome, that most 
all the copies from the hand of this favored individual 
were lost ; but after long search one was found, which 
contained others not less important to the republic 
than that which had been so completely fulfilled by 
the great disaster of Cannae. Several days, by nearly 
all the highest officers of state, were in consequence 
used up in consulting the gods as to the best method 
of offering sacrifices to their satisfaction. Large sums 
of money were expended ; a gilded ox, a gilded heifer 
and two gilded goats were this time offered to the 
gods as considerations for their favor and good dis- 
position to the republicans of Rome.'^* 

Capua had been in the possession of Hannibal 
three years, but the Romans, desirous of its occupa- 
tion, approached it with two consular armies for the 



iQ It may be interesting to see the syllabus of this prophesy, as it was one 
to which the Romans attached the utmost importance: Livy says that it was 
uttered in almost exact correspondence with the following words: "Romans 
of Trojan descent, fly the river Canna, lest foreigners should compel thee to 
fight in the plain of Diomede. But thou wilt not believe me until thou shalt 
have filled the plain with blood, and the river carries into the great sea, from 
the fruitful land, many thousands of your slain countrymen, and thy flesh 
becomes a prey for fishes, birds and beasts inhabiting the earth,"— SpiLiiAN's 
Translation of Livy, lib. 25, ch. 12. 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 227 

purpose of restoring it to the state. Tiberius Gracchus 
was directed, by their orders, to join them at Bene- 
ventum with his cavalry and light-armed troops, to 
protect in their absence the latter place. But he 
must, as was the known custom of the Romans, 
make autopsy of the entrails of animals and offer 
sacrifices to the gods before his departure, by the 
former to ascertain what events, good or evil, were 
going to follow as a result of the change. During 
the examination two serpents found their way, by 
divine direction, into the victim, ate some of the 
liver and then disappeared. To get a more favor- 
able indication, the examination was repeated, and, 
says the historian, the vessels containing the entrails 
were watched with attention, that there might be no 
mistake. The serpents appeared a second and third 
time, and went away untouched, ^o Gracchus was 
cut off by the treachery of some of his own men; 
and construing his end with the aruspicy, the people 
considered that he had been amply forewarned by the 
gods. It is said that, before he set out, he had been 
told the omen related to his own death, and also that 
it would be the work of those who pretended to be 
his friends. 

3o In speaking of the effect these prodigies had upon the minds of the sol- 
diery, Livy remarks that, " Though the aruspice forewarned him " [Gracchus] 
" that the portent had reference to the general, and that he ought to be on his 
guard against secret enemies and machinations, yet no foresight could avert 
the destiny which awaited him."— Spillan's Tbans. or Livy, lib. 25, ch. 16. 



228 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

And after the battle of Herdonea, in wlilcli Cneius 
Fnlvius, the Roman commander, with eleven military 
tribunes and almost the entire army, were either killed 
or captured, Marcus Claudius Marcellus dispatched 
news of the defeat to Rome, but, to inspirit the peo- 
ple and to serve his country, added, that he would 
meet and defeat the conqueror. Notwithstanding, 
several prodigies were reported and believed by the 
superstitious multitude, noble and non-noble. Among 
a large number, a lamb had been yeaned with all the 
evidence of maturity at parturition; lightning had 
struck the ground in front of one of the gates at 
Anagnia, took fire, continued burning for twenty- 
four hours without being fed by any kind of fuel; 
birds had deserted their nests in the grove of Diana ; 
large numbers of serpents had miraculously made 
their appearance in the sea of Tarricinia; in the 
grove of Feronia four statues had sweated blood pro- 
fusely for twenty-four hours ;^* and most surprising 
of all, at Tarquinii a pig was brought forth with a 
human face. 

The foregoing illustrations of the almost daily per- 
turbations of religious fear and courage in the minds 



21 In relating the degree of importance which the government attached 
to these marvelous occurrences, the same authority observes : "These prodi- 
gies were expiated with victims of the greater kind, according to a decree of 
the pontiffs, and a supplication was fixed to be performed for one dayat Rome 
at all the shrines, and another In the territory of Capena, at the grove of 
Peronla."— SPELiiAS'B TbansiiATION of Livy, lib. 27, ch. 5. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 229 

of the Romans during the second Punic war, are only 
a few significant facts, fully verifjdng the great piety 
and superstition of the people. These are only a few 
to the many thousands which occurred. Many more 
might have been added, but would have taken up 
space without adding proof to what is already estab- 
lished. These, though ridiculous in themselves, are, 
nevertheless, important when we attempt to discover 
the condition of the religious faculties of the mind at 
any time particularly sought for, with any given por- 
tion of mankind. I know of no other method by 
which this can be wrought but by tracing particular 
classes of effects to the sources of their origin, and, as 
it were, there measure those causes which produce 
consequences in accordance with their quality, activ- 
ity and quantity. I have found only one nation, and 
but a particular class of that nation, in ancient times, 
that had become atheistic in their belief. This class 
had been students of philosophy in the Hellenic 
states. All nations, and, in fact, all grades in every 
nation, down to the Christian era, were strictly relig- 
ious, zealously devoted to the peculiar worship of 
their own nationality. If there were any difference 
between the Romans and the Carthaginians in their 
religious characteristics regarding the quantity, it 
was in favor of the latter. This devotedness to piety 
was an effect, an exact measurement of the cause or 



230 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

quantitative condition of the religions facnlties in the 
minds of the two peoples. If the form of government, 
the usages, habits and customs of the people in these 
two republics very nearly resembled each other, in 
the religious condition of their fundamental faculties 
of the mind there was a proportionate assimilation. 
Religious, moral, intellectual and animal character- 
istics are consequences of actual phrenic causes, and 
nothing more nor less. Every one of these charac- 
teristics of mankind is referable to a distinct and 
independent cause in the mind; and it is by decom- 
position of the second that its consequent is either 
deforced or expunged from man's mental nature. If 
moral principles are direct and connected conse- 
quences of the primitive religious elements of the 
mind, as divines have claimed, it follows, a priori, 
that those nations whose religious qualities are found 
to have been in greatest development, should correl- 
atively present us with the possession of the highest 
moral properties. But unfortunately the converse is 
too true, as the records of all past ages have always 
proven, without a single exception. 

The superstition of the Romans and their religious 
Ceremonies were no more than a fair picture of what 
we may unmistakably conclude the Carthaginians to 
have been. Such were the daily occurrences among 
the Carthaginians also, and if there were any variance. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 231 

it was because those of the latter were darker and 
attended with greater ritual severity. But we have 
some facts which survived the conflagration of Car- 
thage, to apply as direct evidence of the devout or 
religious proclivity of her inhabitants. Religious 
worship is an outward expression of the inner man; 
and it is, therefore, by studying these effects that 
we arrive at a measurement or understanding of the 
cause in the human mind. 

As has been stated, the most talented of this nation 
were as superstitious almost as the tribes of nomades 
who hovered upon the borders of the state. Hanni- 
bal was as devoted to the religion of his country 
as any soldier he had under his command. The 
oath which he had taken when nine years old, by 
the direction of his father, to "show himself an 
enemy of the Eomans," appears, from his subse- 
quent career, to have been considered by him as a 
binding obligation. For almost as soon as he was 
clothed with the authority of command, he directed 
the power of his arms against the descendants of 
the Trojans, and devoted the best part of his life to 
discharging his first religious duty to the gods, and 
to elevate his native country, irrespective of the just 
impressions of conscience, to supremacy over Europe, 
Asia and Africa. But, whatever influence religion 
might have over the superstitious fancy of his 



232 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

ignorant armed followers, Hannibal was himself greatly 
swayed by auguries, omens, and the predictions of 
soothsayers. He believed in the direct interposition 
of the gods, and their superintendence in the affairs of 
men. Before he set out from his encampment on his 
expedition against Rome, he offered sacrifices to the 
gods to propitiate them in his favor His religious 
feelings were strong, and his devotions, without doubt, 
pure. His pious soul did not omit to pay proper 
reverence to the national divinities and do homage to 
their almighty power at the appropriate times. 

After having taken a thorough review of the troops 
which he had collected for the execution of his oath, 
he went a great distance, to Gades (Cadiz), where he 
fulfilled his vows to Hercules, and, according to Homan 
authority, bound himself in new obligations upon the 
consideration that this divinity lend his power to Han- 
nibal in his contemplated conquest of Rome. " - After 
having put his troops in motion from New Carthage 
to attack the allies of the Romans, and about the time 
he reached the Iberus, we are told by himself that he 
had a wonderful dream or vision. He represented 
that one of the inferior deities appeared before him 
during his sleep, stating that he was sent on an errand 
by Jupiter to take him under special care, to lead him 
and his army into Italy, and at the same time directing 



22 SPiiiiiAN's Translatiok of Livy, lib. 21, ch. 1. 



GENEBAL INTRODUCTION. 233 

him not to look behind. After a reaction of his cour- 
age from the first terror and alarm at the marvelous 
visitation, he turned his eyes to the rear and beheld 
an enormous serpent moving its horrid folds "after the 
manner of its kind," and destroying all vegetation in 
the circuit of its pathway. A dark cloud followed at 
an equal pace over the rear of its person, uttering 
warnings of thunder. Upon making inquiry of his 
guide as to the interpretation of this, he was informed 
by the divine youth that it foreshadowed the desolation 
of the territories of his enemies by the Carthaginians. ^ ^ 
And after the battle of Cannse, in which the Roman 
army was annihilated, he dispatched Mago, one of his 
generals, to the capital of his country, for the object 
of inducing the people of the whole nation of Carthage 
to offer thanksgivings to the gods for granting them so 
many signal victories over their enemies. ^^ 

Sacred ceremonies, prodigies, omens, and all the 
sayings and doings of superstitious minds, were as 
frequent in the camp of Hannibal and the dominions 
of Carthage, as they were at Rome. The Carthagin- 
ians were more superstitious than the nations of 
Europe, Many things conspired to produce this 
result. It has always been conceded by those who 

23 Spillan's Translation of Livt, lib. 21, ch 1. 

34 " For these so great ajid numerous successes. It was proper that the 
public should be grateful, and offer thanksgiving to the Immortal gods." — 
Ibid., lib. 23, ch. 3. 



234 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

have given the history of the human mind attention, 
that superstition always runs higher among people of 
southern climes than the less impressible of colder 
regions. But with Carthage it was more especially so ; 
for the great superstitions of Egypt, among her other 
evils and vices, survived her fall, a continuing curse 
to her own people that remained, and the inhabitants 
of those nations which surrounded the narrow limits 
of the early settlement of Carthage. These, with their 
territories, were afterward subjected to Phoenician rule 
in this part of the world. Many of these superstitious 
tribes became, in the course of time, after their con- 
quest, a very considerable portion of the inhabitants, 
who had grown rich through agricultural and commer- 
cial pursuits, and subsequently, by intermarriage with 
the descendants of the original settlers, wielded an 
influence over the people of the nation not much 
inferior to that exercised by those of pure Phoenician 
origin. The extreme marvelous development which 
Feticism ever generated in the minds of its votaries, 
here blended its might with that system of Polytheism 
which was peculiar to the races inhabiting the south- 
western portions of Asia. Hence it is very naturally 
supposable that the minds of the Carthaginians, a few 
generations after this state of things had occurred, 
would be burdened by superstitious fear at things not 
readily accounted for. But as to the religious culture 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 235 

of the Carthaginians we will let the authority of 
another testify: 

"The religion of the Carthaginians, which was the 
same as that of the Tyrians, Phoenicians, Philistines and 
Canaanites, was most horrid and barbarous. Nothing 
of any moment was undertaken without consulting the 
gods, which they did by a variety of ridiculous rites 
and ceremonies. Hercules was the god in whom they 
placed most confidence ; at least, he was the same to 
them as Mars was to the Romans; so that he was 
invoked before they went upon any expedition, and 
when they obtained a victory, sacrifices and thanks- 
givings were offered up to him. They had many 
other deities whom they worshipped ; but the chief of 
them was Urania or the Moon, whom they addressed 
under different calamities, such as drought, rain, hail, 
thunder or any dreadful storm. 

"Saturn was the other deity whom the Carthagin- 
ians principally worshipped; and he was the same with 
what is called Moloch in Scripture. This idol was the 
deity to whom they offered up human sacrifices, and 
to this we owe the fable of Saturn's having devoured 
his own children. Princes and great men, under par- 
ticular calamities, used to offer up their most beloved 
children to this idol. Private persons imitated the 
conduct of their princes, and thus in time the practice 
became general ; nay, to such a height did they carry 
their infatuation, that those who had no children of 
their own purchased those of the poor, that they 
might not be deprived of the benefits of such sacri- 
fice, which was to procure them the completion of 
their wishes. This horrid custom prevailed long 



236 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

among the Phoenicians, the Tyrians and the Cartha- 
ginians, and from them the Israelites borrowed it, 
although expressly contrary to the order of God. 

"The original practice was to burn these innocent 
children in a fiery furnace, like those in the valley of 
Hinnom, so often mentioned in Scripture ; and some- 
times they put them into a hollow brass statue of Sat- 
urn, flaming hot. To drown the cries of the unhappy 
victims, musicians were ordered to play on different 
instruments, and mothers — shocking thought — made 
it a sort of merit to divest themselves of natural 
affections while they beheld the barbarous spectacle. 
If it happened that a tear dropped from the eyes of 
the mother, then the sacrifice was considered of no 
effect, and the parent who had that remaining spark 
of tenderness was considered as an enemy to the public 
religion. In later times they contented themselves 
with making their children walk between two slow 
fires to the statue of the idol; but this was only a 
more slow and excruciating torture, for the innocent 
victims always perished. This is what in Scripture 
is called the making their sons and daughters pass 
through the fire of Moloch ; and barbarous as it was, 
yet these very Israelites, in whose favor God had 
wrought so many wonders, demeaned themselves so 
low as to comply with it. 

"It appears from Tertullian, who was himself a 
native of Carthage, that this inhuman practice con- 
tinued to take place long after the Carthaginians had 
been subdued by the Romans. That celebrated father 
tells us, that children were sacrificed to Saturn or 
Moloch down to the proconsulship of Tiberius, who 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 237 

hanged the sacrificing priests themselves on the trees 
which shaded their temple, as on so many crosses 
raised to expiate their crimes, of which the soldiers 
were witnesses who assisted at those executions. 

"Diodorus relates an instance of this more than 
savage barbarity, which is sufficient to fill every mind 
with horror. He tells us that when Agathocles was 
going to besiege Carthage, the people, seeing the 
extremity to which they were reduced, imputed all 
their misfortunes to the anger of their god, he had 
been fraudulently sacrificed to with the children of 
slaves and foreigners. That a sufficient atonement 
should be made for this crime, as the infatuated peo- 
ple considered it, two hundred children of the best 
families in Carthage were sacrificed, and no less than 
three hundred of the citizens voluntarily sacrificed 
themselves — that is, they went into the fire without 
compulsion. Such was the religion of the ancient 
Carthaginians. " ^ ' 

And what were the advantages of the people in this 
land of religious cruelties? Her dominions for miles 
surrounding the city were situated in the most fertile 
portion of the globe. Lying about fourteen degrees 
north of the tropic of Cancer, it was in a beautiful 
and salubrious region. The land throughout this 
entire portion of the country had been embellished by 
the erection of dwellings of the most costly workman- 
ship. The gardens and grounds surrounding them, 
were laid out with equal magnificence, and in them 

2S William Bebdtt's History or all Religions, pages 61&-IL 



238 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

flourislied the handsomest flowers, and the most deli- 
cious fruits of either climej in great luxurience, 
rendering the whole panorama of this part of northern 
Africa a delightful and enchanting paradise to the 
beholder.'^ Inheriting from their ancestors strong 
feelings for the acquisition of gold, they were second 
to no other people in enterprise. The earliest settlers 
of Carthage had been born and bred in the parlors of 
Tyrian wealth, and, therefore, had the double advant- 
age of usage to opulence and the habitude necessary 
in the accumulation of riches, they were thus elevated, 
in commercial sagacity and blandishments of address, 
above the surrounding nations. Not far distant from 
Egypt, and in easy communication with Greece, she 
could have possessed herself of every art known in 
the former, and drawn rigid culture from the latter. 
At the birth of our Saviour, the literature and the 
political organization of this famous republic slum- 
bered in a common oblivion, no written work in its 
entirety long surviving her fall. 

Shortly after her beginning as an independent 
power, the greed which this people had for gain, 
rapidly extended its commerce over all seas then 
known to the world ; its ships and merchants sup- 
plying all nations with whatever they were in want. " '^ 

25 RoixiN's Ancient History, vol. 1, page 131 and note 5. 
27 Mommsen says of the commerce of the Carthaginians, that, "At an 
incredibly short period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, In Greece and 



GENEKAi, i:ot?boduction. 239 

Hence not many years after the founding of the city, 
this nascent republic was rich by its mercantile specu- 
lations, and its capital city grown to a port of great 
commercial importance. When she had reached this 
degree of strength, she began her conquests of tlie 
surrounding tribes or petty nations of north Africa. 
With the increase of gain there was, in the disposition 
of her people, a corresponding growth of cupidity, 
and after a time the inhabitants came to dislike the 
slow process of acquirement by trade, and desired the 
more efficient assistance of armed power to wrest 
treasures from those states, which, in all probabil- 
ity, she would be able to conquer. A passion for 
wealth, partly derived by hereditament, and afterward 
increased by culture from youth to old age, in the 
inhabitants, became one of the greatest evils which 
afflicted the republic, and was the principal contrib- 
utory cause first of extinguishing the freedom of her 
inhabitants, and second that of her independence. 
Her wars, which partook more of the appearance 



Sicily, in Africa and Spain, and even on ttie Atlantic ocean and tiie North 
sea. Tlie field of ttieir commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall 
in the west eastward to the coast of Malabar. Through their hands passed 
the gold and pearls of the east, the purple of Tyre, aloes, ivory, lions' and 
panthers' skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from Arabia, the 
linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine wines of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, 
the silver of Spain, tin from England, and iron from Elba. The Phoenician" 
(Carthaginian) "mariners supplied every nation with whatever it needed or 
was likely to purchase; and they roamed everywhere, yet always returned 
to the narrow home to which their affections clung."— History of Rome, 
vol. 2, page 10. 



240 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

and reality of wholesale robberies than of measures 
of self defense, rendered her rising power an object of 
danger and dread to existing states, and drew npon 
the nation the enmity of all mankind. 

Murder and afterward the plunder of dead men's 
effects had become the chief occupation of the Carth- 
aginians from the rise of their commercial prosperity 
to the dismantlement of the city. Although the 
reduction of independent states to tributary payment 
had been the practical rule of warriors, this did not 
appear to be an adequate satisfaction to the Carthagin- 
ians. This nation made it an invariable rule to sack 
and plunder, taking all valuables that a state, with 
which she was in hostility, was in possession, and 
then forcing a revenue from the vanquished by direct 
taxation. This filled her exchequer, from which the 
highest officers of government enriched themselves by 
fraud upon the public. By this venality of appro- 
priating public funds to individual uses, it having, on 
many occasions during the first and second Punic wars, 
well nigh drained the treasury, the republic was 
thereby disarmed and rendered an easy subject of 
conquest by any soldier of fortune. Hannibal, after 
the conclusion of the second Punic war, attempted to 
correct these abuses. ^^ Although he, by his great 
ability, had almost raised his native country to a 

aS BOIiLIK'S ANCIBNT HISTOBT, TOl. 1, pSigO 115. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 241 

situation of supremacy by the prostration of Rome, 
he was nevertheless, at his attempt at a restoration of 
the government to a moral administration, and to the 
original powers of the people, driven into exile by the 
public voice of the nation. So that the majority of 
the inhabitants were so corrupt that they would not 
sustain an effort of virtue to bring back the republic 
to an administration of justice. It is in vain to plead 
in extenuation of the good disposition of the multi- 
tude, that they were ignorant, for, as an entire nation, 
they were the most intelligent people of antiquity. 

Their government, in its organization, was the most 
efficient and protective of its kind. But the multitude 
had become so corrupted, that those principles which 
established the form had no operative effect. Its 
polity was so constituted in its first establishment, and 
continued to its overthrow at the end of the third 
Punic war, that candidates for official stations had to 
depend wholly upon their wealth, character, or merits, 
and popularity with the public. It was therefore, in 
its formation, a republic in which sovereignty resided 
wholly with the masses. But we are informed by 
Aristotle that after Carthage had arrived at a degree of 
considerable military strength, it was not considered 
improper for politicians to buy up the suffrages of the 
population. If this be true, as is also declared by 
others, the credibility of which has never been called 

18 



242 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

in question, it shows that the multitude were as cor- 
rupt as their leaders. This system of bribery had 
become so interwoven with the institutions of the state 
and its political machinery, that it was done publicly, 
and considered not an evil, but a right which every 
one had to dispose of his ballot, or bestow ]iis 
influence, upon him who paid the highest reward. 
Those rights of a free people which gave them a voice 
in making the laws by which they are governed, as a 
protection to themselves against the encroachments of 
the unprincipled, were turned, the same as everything 
else with the Carthaginians, to a calculation of dollars 
and cents, and like stocks or merchandise thrown 
upon the market to the highest bidder who at the 
time might be in need of the proffered article. This 
exhibits a moral debasement in political elections no- 
where to be found in other nations of ancient times. 
This was as true of the people as of the office-holders. 
It is therefore conclusive that at the time Carthage 
began her wars of aggression, robbery and conquest, 
the accumulation of riches and great devotion to 
religion were the only great influences which affected 
the people, virtue being by the abnormal nature of 
their minds something of a foreign element. Those 
moral principles, the only repository of free consti- 
tuted governments, disappeared all of one hundred 
years before the excision of the city; the republic 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 243 

was fallen, although its political formation was not 
destroyed. 

The Carthaginians lived under a greater despotism 
than the subjects of any monarchy that then existed. 
It is weakness to argue about political oppression, 
when we are in a worse bondage to the inferior parts 
of our own being — the moral made subordinate to the 
animal, the noblest to subserve the purposes of the 
meanest. 

But we return to the testimony of facts, and enquire 
what were the morals of this nation, so thoroughly 
cultivated in their religious feelings. The acts of the 
ablest and most prominent men of the state ought to 
be an impartial representation of the moral qualities 
of the inferior orders as well as of their own. For the 
geniuses of a nation, without much labor of their 
understanding, come early to regard the practice of 
evil as a downward career to all its votaries, although 
they are themselves not infrequently swept along with 
the popular tide of public sentiment. And since Han- 
nibal was the ablest warrior of this republic, and was 
also, like the rest of his class, subdued by his own 
ambition for military glory and political power, his 
acts, the external indices of his character, as also 
those of his peers, will give us a fair understanding 
of the condition of those causes in his mind which 
were productive, in their nature, of virtue, flattering 



244 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

man with his divine original and the immortality 
of his soul. 

After the taking of Saguntum he murdered nearly 
all the males, because, by their obstinate resistance, 
they had delayed him in the siege of the town. ^ ® In 
his wars against Rome and the nationalities of Spain, 
he exhibited the same disposition of cruelty that he 
did against the Saguntines ; and this was such a pre- 
dominant trait of his character, that it came to be 
regarded as an incontrovertible fact by all candid 
minds among men of letters.^" In the surrender of 
Victumvse to his authority after the battle, it was an 
understanding between the contracting parties that the 
persons of civilians should be inviolable. When they 
had surrendered the town to him, and given up their 
arms at his demand, he gave the city up to the plun- 
der of his soldiers. He licensed them to commit all 
kinds of brutal acts, rape, torture, and finally butch- 
ered nearly all the defenseless inhabitants. ^ ^ 

In the sixth year of the second Punic war, Darius 
Atilius betrayed the city of Arpi to the Carthaginians, 
when it had been in alliance with Rome and was con- 
sidered a part of the dominions of the state. At the 
time it surrendered to the Carthaginians the latter had 

29 SpiiiLAN's Translation of Livy, lib. 21, ch. 1. 

30 Ibid. 

31 Ibid., lib. 21, ch. 1, 27. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 246 

been victorious in every campaign ; but when power 
changed masters he attempted, for a certain sum of 
gold, to betray it back to its lawful sovereigns. His 
person was placed in irons by the Roman consul. 
After this came to the knowledge of Hannibal, he 
sought out the wife and children of Atilius, took 
their gold and silver, and then, to glut his revenge 
upon the husband, upon the father, for his treachery, 
burned them alive. ^ ^ 

When, toward the conclusion of the war, the fair 
territories of Carthage were being made desolate by 
the arms of Rome, Hannibal was called to Africa *to 
defend his native country. At the eve of his depart- 
ure, the Italians in his service refused to go and engage 
in the African war. They had previously become dis- 
affected to the Romans, and had given him signal 
proof of their desire for his prosperity and that of 
his country. Immediately after their refusal they 
were all put to the sword. ^^ These are but a few 
of his acts, which exhibit the thuggish nature of his 
character. Nor can any one acquainted with the 
history of the ancient world allege this was a system 
which was common to other states than Carthage and 
Israel, prior to the time of Hannibal. 

We have seen that the people who first founded the 

3a Spillan's Translation of Livt, lib. 24, ch. 45. 

33 Consult HOMMSBN'6 HiSXOBT OF ROMB, Yol. 2, page 220. 



246 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

city and the government of Carthage, received defective 
hereditary qualities from their ancestors. When we 
contemplate the regularity of the natural laws in their 
operations, and with what postivity defective conse- 
quences follow in exact proportion, it becomes a 
question of great moment to a people who, among 
their number, shall make the constitutional laws by 
which they are to be governed. If the religious, the 
selfish and the animal faculties, be raised to compara- 
tive supremacy over the moral, the last are rendered 
nugatory in practical activity. Hence a legislature, 
composed of persons whose moral faculties have fallen 
before the selfish and the animal, cannot enact laws 
which correspond to the needs and requirements of the 
nation. And so it was with the Carthaginians, for 
although all persons were elected to oflS.cial stations 
by the voice of the masses, yet we find in the organi- 
zation of its polity certain laws peculiarly derived 
from the animal and the selfish faculties of the mind, 
which were effects at first, but afterward became and 
formed a part of the several causes which finally drove 
the last remnant of moral feeling from the multitude 
of the republic. What were these defects in the state 
constitution, for by them we may be enabled, a poste- 
riori^ to arrive at the phrenic condition of their authors. 
Aristotle informs us that several offices could be 
held by one person at the same time. One individual 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 247 

cannot discharge the duties of a number of independ- 
ent positions in synchroniety ; and as a consequence 
must farm them out to others, friends in all probabil- 
ity, he receiving a portion of those perquisites which 
properly belong to the labor of others. It is not 
difficult to comprehend the object of the legislators 
who framed this clause of the constitution. This was 
probably the first great step of certain parties in the 
government toward the establishment of a privileged 
aristocracy. The same author tells us also that bribery 
was used to influence elections, and the courts of jus- 
tice were included, as a matter of course, and could 
not escape a contagion which would be sure to follow 
such a loose condition of the public morals. The 
wealthy classes had the power in all elections to secure 
the suffrages of the people, and create for themselves 
positions by which they could make fabulous fortunes, 
in comparison to which ordinary riches are but pov- 
erty. This would increase their own capacity to buy 
the people in succeeding elections, and diminish the 
prospects of those who had been less fortunate in the 
first campaigns. When they had secured to them- 
selves these favors, having induced the people to 
believe that these public functionaries sacrificed their 
own interests to those of their country, if they 
received no salaries by which they could enrich 
themselves, under the pretext of expenses or some 



248 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

equivalent representation, they could draw largely 
from the public funds. 

Another error of which we are informed by this 
philosopher, was the method by which the constitu- 
tional provisions excluded the poorer classes, however 
virtuous and intellectual they might be, from the 
offices most important in the republic. To hold the 
offices of chief magistracy or those of senatorial dig- 
nity, it was made necessary for an individual to be of 
noble birth, to have a certain fixed annual income, 
and merit. The last is the only one that was at all 
worthy of the least consideration. As to the amount 
of the income, it in all probability corresponded 
with the rest of the act. If an individual were of 
noble extraction, and possessed the required income, 
there would be little prospect of successfully dispu- 
ting his claims to the other. For, as we have 
seen, one's good qualities depended altogether upon 
the amount of money he had to advance to meet and 
to influence public opinion. Therefore, the third 
became a farce by which, at the creation of the con- 
stitution, the public were blinded to the intent and 
character of the whole act. Merit, the only one of the 
three qualifications worthy of a free people, was placed 
subordinate to the others, made dependent upon them 
as a thing of minor importance. This was a bold and 
rapid advance to aristocratic power. It is not, in our 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 249 

opinion, troublesome to understand what was the 
meaning of these unworthy politicians in the framing 
of these laws, nor of their unfair dealings with that 
people of which the republic was composed. 

It was only our design to hint at the nature of the 
constitutional laws which were drafted by the founders 
of Carthage. Those legal measures reflect the true 
elements which predominated in the character of their 
authors. 

But what were the moral qualities of these rich 
republicans ; for if any class in the world can afford 
to be humane toward their fellow men, it is they. The 
complexion of their conduct ought to be a true quali- 
fication and description of their character. 

In their attempts at the conquest of Sicily, they, 
through pure revenge, tortured several thousand per- 
sons before the walls of Himera, because in the former 
war their forces had been defeated and their general 
slain in battle while trying to capture and plunder the 
town. After the Carthaginians had put them through 
the most cruel tortures their invention could suggest, 
they murdered every one. They bound the rest of the 
inhabitants in chains, carried them to Carthage, and 
sold them all as slaves. Families were separated never 
to see each other again ; and, to complete the desola- 
tion of their hopes, the city, in which they had resided 
for many generations, was burned to the ground and 



250 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

left in ruins two hundred and forty-four years after 
its foundation. No feelings of compassion or sorrow 
were manifested by the citizens after the return of the 
expedition, although thousands of captives were con- 
veyed to Africa, afflicted with the most heart-rending 
agony. But on the contrary, the public at large 
entered into the joys and festivities of the army, and 
offered up thanks to the gods. No voice, prompted 
by the feelings of sympathy for the suffering, was 
raised, in the national halls or out of them, in con- 
demnation of these barbarous acts. In the same 
expedition they took the city of Selinus, and "spared 
neither age nor sex." The Sicilians had, in the first 
war, defeated the whole force of the Carthaginians, 
but granted them peace at their request, preferring a 
relation of friendship to one of hostility. The com- 
mander of the African forces, which destroyed the 
two cities and butchered their inhabitants, was the 
grandson of that officer who was lawfully slain in the 
former expedition. The son of the latter pusillani- 
mously charged his father with dishonor in the failure 
of the expedition, instead of dishonesty for having 
engaged in it. ^ * The spirit of revenge, with all the evils 
which it inflicts, was the principle which controlled 
the affairs of the nation in this war, for whatever was 

34 Consult KoLiiiN's Ancient History, vol. 1, paragraph 2, page 81. 
Also, Farr's Ancient History, vol. 3, page 220, where the historian says 
they murdered eight tliousand people. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 251 

done by the army was consented to and ratified by the 
whole people of the republic. 

The Carthaginians had previously entered into an 
agreement with Xerxes, king of Persia, for the former 
to plunder and reduce the Greek cities on the island 
of Sicily, while the latter should overrun and conquer 
the states of Greece. This accorded well with the feel- 
ings of this part of the Phoenician race, as it presented 
a good opportunity to gratify the rapacity of the sol- 
diery, the officers of the army, and, in fine, every 
member of the republic. These expeditions supplied 
their markets with slaves, in proportion to the increase 
of which there was a reduction in prices. Whatever 
by skill and industry others had acquired, agricultural 
products, silver and gold, men, women and their 
children were transported to Carthage as slaves to 
work upon plantations beneath the vertical rays of an 
African sun. If the Carthaginians did not possess the 
brutal greatness to conquer the world, they did the 
more humiliating one to rob and steal it. Had not 
Rome existed to curtail this military power of the 
south, the inhabitants of the world, except those of 
the north of Europe, and of Asia, with whatever they 
possessed, would have found their way, in all proba- 
bility, into Africa, to enrich the republic, to go and 
come at the behests of the wealthy and the more 
nnprincipled inhabitants of the south. 



252 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Blinded to the fact, that the moral laws, like every 
other, will ever claim all their rights and firmly rivet 
the severest penalties upon those who violate them, 
the Carthaginians did not discover that, during the 
extension of their conquests, and the increasing luster 
of their military glory, their prosperity was only 
apparent, that the republic in reality was tottering 
upon its foundations, and careening to its fall and 
overthrow. 

Polybius, in dwelling by comparison upon the 
morals of the Romans and Carthaginians, says that 
"among the latter, nothing is reputed infamous that 
is joined with gain; but among the former, nothing 
is held more base than to be corrupted by gifts, or to 
covet an increase of wealth by means that are unjust. 
Forasmuch as they esteem the possession of honest 
riches to be fair and honorable, so much, on the 
other hand, all those that are amassed by unlawful 
arts are viewed by them with horror and reproach. 
Among the Carthaginians, money is openly employed 
to obtain the dignities of state ; but all such proceed- 
ings are a capital crime at Rome. As the rewards, 
therefore, that are presented to virtue in the two 
republics are different, it cannot but happen, that 
the attention of the citizens to form their minds to 
virtuous actions must also be different." ^c These 

35 Hampton's Polybius, lib. 6, page 176. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 253 

reflections of the philosophic historian are just and 
true. The great perfidy of the Carthaginians became 
a by- word with the several independent powers of the 
earth ; and the term "Punic faith" was used by them 
as one of ultimate reproach to all those living amongst 
them, who were become unworthy of confidence, by 
falsehood and deception. 

They held mankind in bondage, not as a penalty for 
having unjustly engaged in wars against them, but 
they made war upon the innocent and the unarmed, 
taking them to serve as slaves, and appropriating the 
goods and valuables which they possessed to their 
own uses. They carried on a system of slavery as a 
daily business for gain ; and so extensively had this 
been conducted, that all the habitable portions of their 
dominions were literally covered with them. We are 
informed that some single individuals owned and held 
as high as twenty thousand of them in bondage at one 
and the same time. ^ ' 

When the Romans were in Africa, near the end of 
the second Punic war, and before the recall of Hanni- 
bal, while the affairs of the Phoenicians were almost in 
the last extremity, the latter desired a cessation of 
hostilities for the purpose, as they represented, of 
establishing peace between the two hostile nations. 
Their embassy to the Romans, which secured their 

36 MoMMSKN's HiSTORT OF Boiiu:, vol. 2, page 16. 



254 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

requests, was treated with every mark of respect and 
protection. But upon the first opportunity, while 
the Romans were waiting for an answer from the 
government in Italy to the terms proposed by the 
Carthaginians, the latter violated the conditions of 
the truce, and it was afterward discovered that they 
only secured it for the purpose of deceiving and 
entrapping an enemy which they had failed to suc- 
cessfully confront or conquer in the field. When the 
Romans dispatched an embassy to Carthage to make 
complaint of their violations of the terms of the armis- 
tice, while returning, the embassadors were attacked 
by assassins under the direction of the government, 
and they owed their escape to their own prowess and 
personal courage. The persons of embassadors had, 
by all nations, been regarded as inviolable, and this 
murderous assault was an act of the grossest infamy. ^"^ 
During the time that Agathocles was marching 
upon the capital of this republic with his army, 
several cities having already fallen by the power of 
his arms, the safety of the government, by its own 
people, was considered in danger, and, under the 
circumstances, very liable to be subjected to those 
conditions which, for a number of centuries, it had 
visited upon less potent tribes and nations. Never 
had so great dangers threatened the independence of 



37 MOHM^BN'S HiBTOBY OF BOMS, VOl. 2, page 390. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 255 

Carthage and the freedom of its inhabitants. Even 
at this critical juncture, the selfish ambition of one 
of its citizens attempted a revolution in the govern- 
ment before the enemy, and to establish himself in 
absolute power over those liberties which he hoped 
to destroy. But Bomilcar and his followers were 
checked in their advance and hedged in ; the advant- 
age of position, of numbers, and therefore of probable 
success being in favor of the defendants. Having got- 
ten the better, and to protect itself from all risks, the 
civil authorities guaranteed Bomilcar and his forces 
immunity from punishment of all and every kind 
whatsoever, if they would lay down their arms and 
surrender. Bomilcar had no sooner complied with 
the terms of the agreement than he was nailed to the 
cross. Upon the gibbet he reproached and cursed 
them for their ingratitude, inhumanity and perfidy. ^ ^ 
While they were besieging the city of Agrigentum, 
their conduct there shows at once the great piety and 
the great brutality to which they were predisposed. 
To build up embankments, or elevations, by which 
they could the more easily puncture the walls of the 
town, and thereby make an entrance into it, they 
robbed the graves of the monuments standing upon 
them in a cemetery outside the place. After this act 
of despoliation, a plague spread through the army, 

38 Consult Farb's ANCiBirr History, vol. Z, page 237. 



256 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

sweeping off great numbers of the troops, and the 
officer by whom they were commanded. What little 
conscience remained, performed, as it ever does, its 
functions, and being by it condemned in consequence 
of the sacrilege which they had committed, they, 
Tinder this condition of religious fear, supposed the 
gods had dispatched the souls of those who formerly 
had been tenants of the desecrated necropolis, to 
punish by pestilence, and reproach by their ghastly 
visages, the Carthaginians for their crimes. Spirits 
had been seen by the whole army, and there was 
no mistaking that the wrath of the gods had been 
aroused ; they, therefore, must be appeased ; and 
accordingly they sacrificed a child to the god Saturn, 
(by burning alive,) "and victims were thrown into the 
sea" as offerings to Neptune. ^^ Notwithstanding the 
conviction which they had had before their eyes of a 
manifest displeasure of the gods, it had so slight an 
effect upon their elastic consciences, that they imme- 
diately after it committed cruelties so enormous that 
a moral nature cannot contemplate them without a 
shudder. When it was found that the city could no 
longer be held by the natives ; that those who remained 
would, in all probability, after the Carthaginian cus- 
tom, be butchered, it became a necessity for all to 

39 Bollin's Ancient History, vol. 1; also, Fabr's Ancient History, 
vol. 3, page 321. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 257 

make their escape at the first opportunity which 
presented itself. It was evident that they could not 
secure the departure of the aged and the infirm, for 
their flight must of necessity be a rapid one at night, 
or otherwise be exposed to an attack of the enemy's 
cavalry, by which the whole would be entirely immo- 
lated. After shedding many tears for those whom 
they must leave behind, they made their escape to a 
neighboring city. The Carthaginians then entered 
the place, and ran the sword through every helpless 
person, although they piteously plead for mercy. * *> 

For one hundred years prior to the conclusion 
of the third Punic war, the Carthaginians had been 
declining in their moral character more rapidly than 
they had in the same length of time at any former 
period. For several generations the principles of 
rectitude had evidently been disappearing from the 
character of each, at an increased ratio to what it did 
in the preceding. In addition to avarice, other cor- 
ruptions, concomitant with the Carthaginian system 
of accumulating wealth, had made their appearance. 
Perfidy, licentiousness and profligacy, to an almost 
indefinite degree, had seized all classes of the republic. 

Yet the religious proclivities, the strong tendencies 
of the people to bow in holy adoration to the gods, 
and to believe in their miraculous interposition for the 

40 Farr's Ancient Hisiobt, vol. 3, page 323. 
17 



268 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

evil, or for the welfare of mankind, had not lapsed 
from the minds of the people, nor lessened in their 
effects since the foundation of the city. But those 
moral elements which, when exercised by necessity, 
constitute the fortitude of the hero, the only true saga- 
city of the statesman, and the most estimable qualities 
of the human race, were almost entirely extinguished 
from the mentality of the nation. In their character 
we find a wide difference in the effect of the culture of 
the religious faculties, by the practice of religion on 
the one hand, and that of morality on the other. 
While the attentive reader finds in them prodigious 
feelings of religion, he discovers almost a complete 
dearth of virtue. 

Thus we have seen to what degree the Carthagin- 
ians were devoted in religious worship of the gods, 
to their commands and injunctions. We have also 
shown what their moral feelings were, if they can be 
said to have possessed any at all. This contrast is 
prodigious. The depravity of this people was the 
approximate cause of their complete extermination. 
Viewing the vast wealth, the financial sagacity, the 
potency of this great republic, and its final ending, in 
all its features, it furnishes one of the most lamentable 
pictures which history records. The annals of this 
nation establish beyond a question that a culture of 
the religious faculties of the mind, is not, in the least 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 259 

degree, efficient to prevent a people's fall into the 
lowest depths of criminality. 

Since, however, two objections, by the Christian 
world, may be opposed to our method of disproving 
this great metaphysical error of ecclesiastical origin, 
by evidence drawn from nations devoted to a false 
or to a pagan religion, we have, therefore, thought it 
not only proper but necessary to entirely remove this 
last shelter from those who have been opposed to the 
progress of true Christianity, and to its influenj3e upon 
mankind, by their erroneous, and in some cases unscru- 
pulous assumptions of its tendencies. So long has this 
weighed on the mind, without dissent or opposition, 
that the claim has, for centuries, been engrafted into 
historical works, and in this manner given a dogmatic 
assurance the appearance of truth and instruction.** 
The foregoing chapter is as adapted, in evidence, 

41 An eminent compiler of ancient history, in dwelling upon the cruelties 
of the Carthaginians and their superstitions, reflected the doctrine that the 
Christian religion, in its elements, contains the efficacy of man's moral 
elevation. This sufficiency has ever been the claim of the hierarchy of 
Borne, and it is well kiiown that whatever nation firmly and longest adhered 
to her teachings, has fallen into greater vices, poverty, brutality and igno- 
rance than anyone of those nations which separated from her at and since 
the Reformation. But we quote : " When wo read such lamentable facts in 
history as these," [the murder of three thousand men by the Carthaginians 
after their capture of Himera,] " how ought we to express our gratitude to 
God, the source of all good, for the right notions imparted to us in the Bible 
concerning the soul of man, and for that knowledge which keeps us from 
imbruing our hands in the blood of our fellow men; which makes us wise 
unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus; and which shows us 
how just will be their condemnation, who, knowing these things, act as did 
the ancient heathen, and even with more brutality."— Fakr's Ancient 
History, vol. 2, page 20. 



260 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

as it would be had the people lived at a later period, 
under the improved tuition of our Christian masters. 
Christians reject all ideas of spiritual improvement 
arising from pagan religions, and spiritualists, mostly 
those which spring from modern theological princi- 
ples, claiming greater spiritual development tendencies 
for the pagan, than for the Christian, religion. Hence 
the evidence of the present chapter is better adapted 
to the mental status of the latter, and the next to the 
former. We shall, therefore, in the next, present some 
evidence from the history of the Jewish mind. 



CHAPTER V. 



OENEEAL INTRODUCTION" 



Error of the Christian Clergy proved from the history of Jewish mind 
from the birth of Abraham to the Egyptian Bondage — From the 
Exodus to their Dispersion — General Reflections In Retrospect — 
The Chi-istian Religion not Defective, but Misapplied — Acts of the 
Christian Churches in America — The Moral Degeneracy of their 
Cormnunicants — Increase of Depravity with the Increase of Relig- 
ion, the latter indirectly, though not du-ectly, the cause — Christianity 
adapted to the Development of the Religious, but not to the Devel- 
opment of the Moral, Feelings — ^Direct Culture of the Moral 
Sentiments being omitted in the United States, partially through 
the influence of the Clergy, one of the causes of the disappear- 
ance of Virtue in the People — The Religious and the Moral 
Feelings, being positive institutions of Nature, of different primi- 
tive quahties, require positive but different kinds of Culture — 
Penalties for neglect of either. 

While some who believe in the Christian religion are 
willing to acknowledge that moral and religions feel- 
ings are effects of distinct and independent causes in 
the mind, and, that a culture of each of these causes, 
under ordinary circumstances, is necessary to give 
them sufficient energy to work man's moral eleva- 
tion, they, at the same time, hold that the promises 
of immortality, as couched in the Bible, and the 

(261) 



262 HISTORY OJT THE DECLENSION. 

announcement of punitive laws as preventives of trans- 
gression of the moral code, wholly supercede all 
necessity of a rigid culture of the moral faculties. 
Others claim that man ever has been, and is at pres- 
ent, wholly and totally depraved — a direct negation of 
all fundamental moral powers in man's mental nature. 
This last, liowevor, is a declaration of disbelief in our 
moral condition before the fall, and an averment that 
all things are now as they were when man was cremated, 
or at tlie beginning of human organization, and thus 
we have substantially what is called fate among the 
heathen nations, and foreordination with the Christian 
world. Under this belief of foreordination, man is 
wholly released from all moral obligations both to his 
fellow and to his God^ it is a complete rejection of the 
thought of a revelation as well as of all moral respons- 
ibility. If man have no fundamental moral powers, 
as predetermination and total depravity imj)ly, 
he could not comprehend a moral code, much less 
obey one. 

The author does not care to trouble the reader by 
a confutation of those who claim that an individual 
must be at a fever heat of religious excitement to have 
all the advantages derivable from the moral code of the 
Old and the New Testament ; those who are constantly 
exclaiming "this or that is not Christianity" ! He 
would make the same disposition of those who call 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 263 

everything natural religion, or religion, having, them- 
selves, such a broad idea of the meaning of the word 
as in reality gives one no understanding of its defini- 
tion. The Christian religion is not defective in itself, 
but in the past there has been, and there is at present, 
a misapplication of it to the mental powers. 

There are two sources from which phenomena may 
arise to influence any particular portion of our phrenic 
nature; the one arises by an activity of the faculty 
from within, and directs an immediate effect upon and 
within that particular fundamental power, by anima- 
tion, in which that activity had its origin. The other 
is caused by raising an emotion in that faculty by 
some object from without, and may be termed external 
influence. So that whatever there is in Christianity, 
be it religious, moral, or both, it can be increased by 
cultivating that or those faculties by which those 
characteristics are produced. If, therefore, the relig- 
ious faculties of the mind produce moral impressions, 
which they must do to have the ethical influence 
claimed for Christianity by its devotees, there must, 
of necessity, be greater virtue in that nation so devout 
than in one which is not. Its virtues, in proportion to 
the religious enthusiasm of its people, ought to pre- 
dominate over its vices. 

What we seek to establish in this chapter is, that 
those two influences, internal and external, by their 



264 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

combined operation, greatly increased the religions 
natnre of the Jews. We shall afterward show, by the 
quality of their conduct, what their morals were, 
thereby proving, the one being in contrast to the other, 
that there can be no culture of any fundamental moral 
feeling by the profession and practice of religion. 
This system will also prove that there is not sufficient 
Divine power, in the ordinary conception of the term, 
in Christianity, to instantly reverse and protect man's 
moral qualities from being encroached upon and 
superceded by his animal — a claim which inconsiderate 
persons have ever put forward to the great detriment 
of all human progress. We shall, therefore, proceed 
to offer those facts of history which tend to determine 
the religious and the moral qualities of the Jewish 
nation down to the destruction of Jerusalem, present- 
ing, as we firmly believe, a striking contrast in those 
two characteristics of its people. 

It was in Abraham and Isaac that a blessing was 
pronounced to all mankind, and, more especially, that 
great prosperity should be the inheritance of their 
descendants, the Jews, in riches as well as in political 
power, so long as they walked with God, or adhered 
to the religious virtues of their illustrious progenitors. 
To Abraham was given the promise of mighty and pow- 
erful nations, possessing the land of Canaan, in which 
he, at the time, dwelt a stranger, by the sufferance 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 265 

of the idolatrous hordes which surrounded him. 
God entered into a covenant with Abraham, in which 
he bound his descendants forever ; the generations of 
Abraham were to be born within the compact, for it 
was ever afterward ratified by a ceremonial on the 
eighth day after birth, before they had arrived at any 
discretion regarding the matter ; and they were thus 
bound to observe the statutes which Gfod should, from 
time to time, establish among them.^ Here God 
appeared personally to Abraham, ^ as he did many 
times afterward to other patriarchs of Israel, as his 
guide and director, ^ so ordaining, that although he 
and his kindred were then poor and few in numbers, 
they eventually came into possession of a very large 
tract of land called Canaan, as an everlasting domin- 
ion, and became also a very powerful nation. God 
sent three angels to warn Abraham and Lot of the 
destruction which He was about to visit upon the 
Sodomites for their wickedness.* God appeared to 
Abraham a second time, and, because he had so 
fully observed all the commandments, told him He 
would bless the blessings which he had formerly 
received, and that the Jews should ever afterward 



1 See first book of Pentateuch, ch. 17. 

2 Ibid., verse 22. 

3 We see no reason why this passage should be regarded figuratively. 

4 Oenbsis, ch. 18. 



^200 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

posse j5s The g-ates of their enemies, and liave an 
establislieil abode.* Sodom was destivved almost 
immeiiiately after the deelaratioii was made to Abra- 
ham and to Lot, so that they, retainiui;- a remeu\brance 
of the pivdiction. and afterward the rnin whieh 
ooennvd to the city, weiv, per foree, eompeUed to 
believe the evidences of tlieir senses, and know tliat 
Grod, in reality, was the governor of the worUl: that, 
here in time, lie had inflicted punishments npon the 
tmjiist according to their merits. 

God frequently appeared also to Isaac and fore- 
told him that great personal prosperity should be his 
reward : it was so amply fultilled in his lifetime, that 
he became far richer and more potent than any of the 
Philistines.'' The Almighty also appeared again to 
Isaac, and reaffirmed the pivdiction which had been 
made to his father with refeivnce to the power and 
national prosperity of his descendants. '' So that curse 
which was pronounced upon man at his fall was piu'tl}' 
"vsdthdrawn from Abraham, Isaac and their descend- 
ants, the earth once more producing its hundredfold. ^^ 
The herds belonging to Isaac had increased almost at 
an equal ratio, so that his retinue of servants became 



5 Genesis, ch. i^, verses 15-19 inclusive. 

6 Ibid., ch. 26, verses l;J-lo induslye. 

7 Ibid., ch. :}«), verse S4. 
S Ibid., ch. :^o, verse 12. 



GENERAL IXTIiODrjCTfON. 207 

remarka})]y great, and outshorifi all the rio?i and 
powerful among the PhilistineH; they envied his 
■proH])f.jnty and drove him from the land. Tii'm 
rapid worldly prosperity did not attend the efforts 
of tlie idolatrous inhabitants of Canaan, for they were 
subjected, like all the rest of mankind, to fionstant 
disappointments. Hence it was not surprising that 
the natives of Canaan came to regard the success of 
Isaac as being the signal favor of Divine providence ; 
and so it was. The natives sfjemed to regard Isaac' s 
power something beside and beyond the number of 
his servants and his prodigious wealth. They feared 
this Other jjower, and solicited peace after they had 
told him to go from the land, thereby showing that 
the whole land of Canaan, in some remarkable man- 
ner, were inferior to Isaac in might. It was a virtual 
confession of their weakness when they said, "We 
saw certainly that the Lord was with thee; and we 
said, Let there be an oath betwixt ns, even betwixt 
xis and thee, and let ns make a covenant with thee, 
that thou wilt do ns no hnrt as we have not touched 
thee, and as we have done nnto thee nothing but good, 
and have sent thee away in peace ; thon art now the 
blessed of the Lord.'"'' This was as comjjlete a con- 
fession of their weakness and of his strengt?i as could 
in any manner be made. So it was not then known 

9 QzsTesiB, ch. 26. versea 24, 20. 



268 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

only to the descendants of Abraham, but to the idol- 
atrous world also, that God attended upon the affairs 
of Isaac, and was the immediate source of all his 
greatness. 

The Almighty also appeared to Jacob, and gave 
him to understand that He would accompany him 
wheresoever he went and be his preserver througli 
life. Jacob saw God in a dream, standing above a 
ladder which reached from earth to heaven, the angels 
of the Lord ascending and descending upon it. Jacob 
was then told that the Divine person who stood above 
the ladder was the God of Abraham, of Isaac, that He 
would also be the God of Jacob ; that his posterity 
should be as numerous as the dust of the earth, and 
should spread abroad to the west, to the east, to the 
north and to the south. In a word, his descendants 
should become a considerable part of the inhabitants 
of the world, and that they should be victorious in all 
those directions which answer to the four quarters of 
the globe. Nothing should be able to resist their 
arms. God greatly prospered the worldly affairs of 
the two brothers, Jacob and Esau, for we are told 
that "their riches were more than they might dwell 
together; and the land wherein they were strangers 
could not bear them because of their cattle."^" 

It seems that the farther we trace the history of the 



lo Genesis, oh. so, verse 7. 



GENERAL INTKODLTCTION. 269 

descendants of Abraham, till we reach, the time of 
Daniel's vision of the cleansing of the sanctuary, we 
find more signal and extraordinary manifestations of 
Providence in guiding this portion of mankind and 
making His marvelous power known to them. For 
Divine goodness continued with Joseph, whom God 
apparently raised up to protect the people from famine, 
and to instruct the heathen king of Egypt in the ways 
of the "only true God." The Egyptians were fetich 
worshipers, as were also the inhabitants of the sur- 
rounding country ; their worship was offensive in the 
sight of God. He designed to bring a famine upon 
the earth, upon Egypt and that portion of the world 
which immediately surrounded it. A heathen king, 
to convince those in power, should be one of the 
agencies through which the greatness ^and suprem- 
acy of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob and 
of Joseph, should be made known to the Egyj)tians, 
and assist in bringing the favored people of heaven 
into consideration with the greatest political govern- 
ment in existence. It made its appearance in the 
way of a dream, and partook more of the nature of 
substance than of shadow, of reality than of fiction. 
But we are told that none of the wise men of Egypt 
could interpret the dream of Pharaoh, Josc^pli, 
through the favor of Heaven, made known to the 
king the interpretation of it; it being, as is known 



270 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

to every one, seven years of plenty and seven years 
of want. This dream was so interpreted more than 
seven years before the famine began, and thus there 
could be no skepticism regarding its divine original. 
In consequence of the wonderful discovery and inter- 
pretation of it by Joseph, he was made ruler over 
all Egypt, second in eminence and power only to 
Pharaoh himself. As God had saved the family of 
Noah from drowning during the flood, He now saves 
the people of Egypt and Canaan, during the severest 
famine which, before or since, has ever been upon any 
part of the earth. 

Joseph was directed by Pharaoh to follow his own 
judgment, and that he should have the power of the 
crown to enforce whatever measures he thought neces- 
sary to save mankind from the impending ruin which 
now threatened the world. Joseph therefore proceeds 
upon his duty, and purchases all the grain that is to 
be bought in the market, against the dearth which is 
to come. For seven years he bought and stored the 
surplus products of the earth. After the seven years 
of plenty had ceased, the famine, in perfect accordance 
with the prediction of Joseph, began, and greatly dis- 
tressed the inhabitants of the surrounding countries 
as well as those of Egypt and Canaan. But there was 
a refuge, a place to which all might come and pur- 
chase the support of life. Nor did Grod except the 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 271 

idol worshipers ; all heard that corn could be bonght 
in Egypt, and all the great highways leading down to 
the capital of Eg3rpt were, we have reason to believe, 
filled with immense caravans laden with money or its 
equivalent in goods to exchange for corn. But when 
the money of the inhabitants of those countries was 
exhausted, the governor of Egypt indicated to them 
he would take their cattle. When their money and 
their cattle were both expended, he took their land in 
exchange for provision. Everything, therefore, within 
the dominions of Pharaoh became the property of the 
crown, by the time that the seven years of scarcity 
had ended and the waters had inundated the valley 
of the Nile. Joseph then farms out the land to its 
original owners, upon the payment of a revenue of 
twenty per centum per annum to the king. 

If rulers were disposed to charge such a tax upon 
their subjects now, all the bayonets in the world could 
not support them upon their thrones; their governments 
would be overthrown, or their dominions abandoned 
by their subjects. But the manner in which the whole 
property, personal and real, of Egypt was parted with 
by the inhabitants and paid for by the government, 
was an equitable transaction which involved the 
welfare of most all mankind. The revenue of twenty 
per centum per annum continued down to the time 
of Sesostris; and, in all probability, there have been 



272 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

very few monarchs of ancient or of modern ages 
wlio have received such a tremendous revenue. The 
Pharaohs became richer than all other potentates, as 
Egypt was the most productive part of the world. ^^ 
But Jacob, in his old age, had a vision, when he 
was on his way down to Egypt to see Joseph, in 
which Grod instructed him to fear nothing, as God 
himself was bringing him and all his posterity into 
Africa, and would continue with him and his chil- 
dren, ^^ finally returning them all back again to that 
country from which they departed; and that they 
should continue many ages the sole owners and rulers 
of Canaan. Joseph, before his death, foretold to his 
brethren that their descendants should, according to 
the promise of God to Abraham, to Isaac and to 
Jacob, be brought back again to own and to rule 
over the land of the Canaanites for many centuries. 
Joseph also told his brethren, after the death of 
Israel, that the sale which they made of him was 
not a matter of perfidy in them, but an act of God' s 
to save His people from that scourge with which He 
designed to inflict certain idolatrous nations. And 
Joseph bound his brethren by oath, before he died, 
to take his bones with them when they returned east 
into their everlasting possession. 

11 Consult JosEPHus' Antiquities of the Jews; also Genesis, ch. 47. 

12 Genesis, ch. 46, verses 3 and 4. 



GENERAL INTEODUOTION. 273 

Such were tlie miraculous interpositions of provi- 
dence in behalf of the Hebrews, from the maturity 
of Abraham down to the death of Joseph and the 
bondage of the children of Israel. Can it be for a 
moment doubted that a people, so guided by the 
hand of God, would not believe all His commands? 
Can one suppose, with any degree of reason, that 
religion would be less potent when there were 
personal providential interventions in the affairs of 
man than when there were none ? So long as miracles 
continued to be brought to the knowledge of the 
Hebrews, before the death of Jacob even down to 
that of Joseph, they kept the commandments of God. 
Nor were they very immoral, except the dishonesty 
practiced upon Esau by Jacob, through the intrigues 
of his mother, and the sale of Joseph by his brethren 
to Egyptian merchants. But these were at the 
special instance of God to more effectually fulfill his 
promises to Isaac regarding the great political power 
of his descendants, and more immediately to protect 
the Hebrews from that famine which he brought upon 
the idolatrous nations of Asia and Africa. 

After the d^ath of Joseph the crown of Egypt 
passed to the possession of a different family, which 
hated the Israelites, fearing that their continued 
multiplicity would eventually outnumber the inhabit- 
ants, and seize the government itself; they were, 

1 8 



274 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

therefore, impatient for their extinction. Hence the 
force of the Egyptians was used against them con- 
stantly, for their slavery and oppression. ^ ^ It was 
predicted by a sacred scribe of Pharaoh that one out 
of the Hebrews should be born who, if he grew to 
maturity, would become a great and wise man, per- 
forming many extraordinary deeds, and with the pro- 
digious numbers to which the Israelites had already 
increased, would be a standing danger to the realm. * * 
An order was accordingly sent, by authority, to 
slay all the male children of the Israelites as soon 
as they should be born. But the child, the life 
of which it was their object to destroy, was saved 
by the daughter of the reigning prince, was raised 
and educated by the royal family, and that, too, when 
the scribe who had predicted his birth, told the king 
that he was rearing that very infant which eventually 
would become a terror to all the Egyptians. ^ ^ In this 
manner God caused the enemies of the Israelites to 
nourish, to educate, and to adorn the mind of that very 
babe, in opposition to their wishes, for the destruction 
of which they had committed so many murders. 

Moses was not much sooner grown to physical and 
mental maturity than God appeared to him as had 

13 Exodus, ch. 1. 

14 JOSEPHUS' AnTIQIJITIES OF THE JEWS, bOOk 2, ch. 9. 

15 See conclusion of the ninth chapter of Josbphus' ANTiQtirnBS OF 
THE Jews, book 2. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 275 

been foretold by the Egyptian. And as to this miracle 
we will let the learned historian Josephus testify, as 
his narration of the fact corresponds to that of Moses, 
from which he drew his knowledge. Moses had gone 
with the flocks of his father in-law to Mount HoreH 
for pasturage. "And here it was that a wonderful 
prodigy happened to Moses; for a fire fed upon a 
thorn bush ; yet did the green leaves and the flowers 
continue untouched, and the fire did not at all consume 
the branches, although the flame was great and fierce. 
Moses was affrighted at this strange sight, as it was to 
him : but he was still more astonished when the fire 
uttered a voice, and called him by name, and spake 
words to him by which it signified to him how bold he 
had been in venturing to come into a place whither no 
man had ever come before, because the place was 
divine ; and advised him to remove a great way from 
the flame, and be contented with what he had seen ; 
and though he were himself a good man, and the 
offspring of great men, yet that he should not pry any 
farther : and He foretold to him, that he should have 
glory and honor among men, by the blessing of God 
upon him. He also commanded him to go away 
thence, with confidence, to Egypt, in order to his 
being the commander and conductor of the body of 
the Hebrews, and to his delivering his own people 
from the injuries they suffered there: 'For,' said 



276 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

G-od, *they shall inhabit this happy land which your 
forefather Abraham inhabited, and shall have the 
enjoyment of all sorts of good things ; and thou, by 
thy prudence, shall guide them to those good things.' 
But still He enjoined him, when he had brought the 
Hebrews out of the land of Egypt, to come to that 
place, and to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving there. 
Such were the divine oracles which were delivered out 
of the fire." Moses distrusted his own abilities to 
execute these commands, as he feared his own people 
would not believe God had thus spoken to him, and 
if they were disposed to follow, Pharaoh would not 
let them go, as the Egyptians were amassing great 
riches from their labor. 

"But," says the historian, "G-od persuaded him 
to be courageous on all occasions, and promised to be 
with him, and to assist him in his words, when he was 
to persuade men, and in his deeds when he was to 
perform wonders. He bid him also to take a signal of 
the truth of what He said, by throwing his rod upon 
the ground, which, when he had done, it crept along, 
and was become a serpent, and rolled itself round in 
its folds, and erected its head, as ready to revenge 
itself on such as should assault it, after which it 
became a rod again as it was before. After this, God 
bid Moses put his right hand into his bosom: he 
obeyed, and when he took it out it was white and in 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 277 

color like to chalk, but afterward returned to its 
wonted color again. He also, upon God's command, 
took water that was near him, and poured it upon the 
ground, and saw the color was that of blood. Upon 
the wonder that Moses showed at these signs, God 
exhorted him to be- of good courage, and to be assured 
that He would be the greatest support to him; and 
bid him make use of these signs in order to obtain 
belief among all men, that 'thou art sent by me,' and 
dost all things according to my commands. Accord- 
ingly, 1 enjoin thee to make no more delays, but to 
haste to Egypt, and to travel night and day, and not 
draw out the time ; and so make the slavery of the 
Hebrews, and their sufferings, to draw out the longer. 
"Moses having now seen and heard these wonders, 
that assured him of these promises of God, had no 
room left him to disbelieve them ; he entreated Him 
to grant him that power when he should be in Egypt ; 
and besought Him to vouchsafe him the knowledge of 
His own name, and since he had heard and seen Him, 
that He would also tell him His name, that when he 
offered sacrifices, he might invoke Him by such His 
name in his oblations. Whereupon God declared to 
him His holy name, which had never been discovered 
to man before ; concerning which it is not lawful for 
me to say any more."*" 

i6 JosBFHUS' Antiquities op the Jews, book 2, ch. 12 ; also. Exodus, ch. 3. 



278 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Having thus seen where and under what authority- 
Moses began to effect the emancipation of the Hebrews, 
we shall see, first, what were the miracles which the 
Israelites witnessed; what reasons thereunder they 
had for believing in the powers of religion; and, 
second, what their moral condition was before the 
exodus, and their conduct during it to their arrival 
in those lands to which they were led by Moses and 
Joshua. We shall attempt to show, by facts, that 
these descendants of Abraham had greater reason and 
inducements to have faith and belief in religion than 
any other people that have ever lived, and that they, 
notwithstanding this, fell to the commission of more 
than brutal crimes, and also were sunken in vices to 
an equal magnitude. Those signs and miracles wrought 
by Almighty power came within range of the sensuous 
faculties of their minds, and thereby save them posi- 
tively relative knowledge of a direct administration 
from above upon the affairs of men below. 

After Moses had arrived in Egypt and related the 
authority which he had to lead them out of bondage, 
they believed him to be an impostor, whose marvel- 
ous statements, if followed, would expose them to 
destruction, by arousing the whole united power of 
the Egyptians against them. They refused to give the 
least weight to his allegations. * "* When Moses could 

17 Exodus, ch. 0, verse 0. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 279 

not prevail upon the Israelites to depart, God instructed 
him and Aaron to go in before Pharaoh and demand of 
him the manumission of Israel and the right of their 
departure. ^^ But when Moses distrusted his capa- 
city to influence the king, God told him he was 
much superior to Pharaoh ;*• more than this, that 
he should be a god to Pharaoh, and that Aaron 
should be his prophet, in a word giving power to 
dispose of Pharaoh and the kingdom if he chose. '<> 
After miracles were performed before the king, he 
still refused to let them go, and Moses and Aaron 
were directed to smite the river of the Nile and the 
waters throughout the land, which, after the compli- 
ance, became blood through all the country, so there 
were none to drink ;2i all living creatures in the waters 
died, and from these two causes they became a stench 
and pestilence to all in Egypt. ^^ All streams, ponds, 
springs, wells, and whatever water there was stored 
up in vessels, became blood. ^^ A miracle so univer- 
sal in a country as to prevail all over it, must have 
come to the knowledge of the Hebrews, and the causes 
made known to their understandings. In this there 

i8 Exodus, ch. 6, verses 10 and 11. 
ig Ibid., ch. 7, verse 1. 

20 Ibid. . 

21 Ibid., ch. 7, verso 20. 

22 Ibid., verse 21. 

23 Ibid., verses 19 and 20; also Joskphtts' Antiqtiitiks of the Jews, 
book 2, ch. 14. 



280 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

could be no deception; they did not have to rely 
upon the testimony of Moses and Aaron, but it 
became absolute knowledge to those faculties of the 
mind which take cognizance of the secondary quali- 
ties of matter. The Lord brought frogs up out of 
all the waters, and they died, so that every house 
in the nation was filled with disagreeable odors from 
their decaying carcasses. 2* He caused the dust of 
the land to become lice, so as to cover man and 
beast. 2^ God also afflicted the land with a plague 
of flies ;2 6 but there were none of all these things in 
the houses or on the persons of the Israelites. Next 
spread the disease of the murrain, so that it affected 
every beast in all Egypt ; He sent a pestilence of boils 
upon man and beast, not excepting Pharaoh and his 
magicians ; and one of hail mingled with fire, which 
destroyed every green thing. ^ "* The Lord smote the 
land with locusts and darkness, ^s And, finally, to 
finish up the last warning to the Egyptians, and to 
teach them the power of the true God — that he stood 
by the oppressed and against the oppressor — ^the first- 
born of this nation, from him who should succeed 



34 Exodus, ch. 8, verses 1-6 ; also Josephus' Antiqottibs of the Jews, 
book 3, ch. 14, sec. 2. 

25 Exodus, ch. 8, verse 17; also Josephus' AurnQtiiTiES or the Jews, 
book 2, ch. 14, sec. 3. 

26 Exodus, ch. 8, verse 24; ch. 9, verses 1-3. 

27 Ibid., ch. 9, verses 1-7. 
a8 Ibid., ch. 10. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 281 

Pharaoh upon his throne, to the eldest child of the 
lowest family, were smitten with death. Every family 
in this flourishing kingdom was lamenting its own 
dead. But none of these plagues afflicted Israel. 

So far as a detailed history of the Israelites is 
concerned, during their bondage, which took place 
after the death of Joseph, it is such a blank in 
Grenesis that little conjecture can be made as to the 
influence of external objects upon their minds, or as 
to the positive effect which their various mental facul- 
ties, religious and moral, had either to exhalt or to 
depress the relations which they maintained toward 
God and to the Egyptians. But before they moved 
into Egypt, it is known that they led the lives of 
shepherds, in extended and unpopulated plains, and 
meeting with that corruption which is ever prevalent 
in crowded cities but seldom, there was very little 
in opposition to their chosen occupation, by way of 
competition, to stimulate the animal and selfish facul- 
ties of the mind. They were, therefore, more acted 
upon by the nobler parts of their own nature than 
by the selfishness, hypocracy and turpitude of the 
external world. And such were the facts, for when 
they entered into the land of Egypt they were pure 
in morals, and reposed entire faith and confidence 
in the promises and rectitude of Almighty Grod. 



282 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Their minds had been subjected to bnt few baleful 
influences from without, hence their moral and 
religious elements strengthened as they grew older, 
giving these two qualities complete control over the 
inferior portions of their nature. But after the com- 
mencement of that rigorous bondage to which they 
were subjected, they came in contact with those baser 
qualities which are the offspring of cold and selfish 
natures, predominant in all political organizations, 
as symptoms of that decay which ever mark the 
last days of their existence. It was here, under task 
masters, fresh from the elegant and refined society 
of the Egyptians and from their holy orisons to the 
national gods, that the Israelitish character was first 
imbruted by imitating and absorbing the popular 
notions of a degenerate age. The surrounding influ- 
ences were those which had already first corrupted 
and then destroyed all good qualities from the minds 
of the native inhabitants, it now began, as it were, 
the decomposition of the same elements in the minds 
of the Hebrews. When we come to calculate the vast 
influence which external objects, be they evil, have 
to extinguish moral principles in a single genera- 
tion, we shall be, by force of reason, compelled to 
acknowledge the hopelessness of any people so con- 
ditioned for four hundred, or even two hundred, 
years. In fact, should they issue with any elements 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 283 

of justice or of benevolence remaining, it would be 
a greater miracle tlian any which are related by the 
patriarchial writers of the Jews. The lower the con- 
dition of servitude the worse it is both for the master 
and the slave. The predominant selfish characteristics 
of the two are reciprocal; and, as must be the case, 
the moral status of the master being lower than that 
of the slave, there is a compilation of evil causes 
which, taken together, complete the ruin of both. To 
such a degree of skepticism, by their oppressions 
and associations, had the Hebrews been reduced, 
that they, with all their traditional remembrance of 
the prosperity of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob and of 
Joseph, believed those representations made by Moses 
and Aaron to emanate from the same source of the 
mind which held them in bondage. They looked 
upon all mankind as wholly destitute of good inten- 
tions, and that Grod had abandoned His government 
of the world, if they did not regard all statements 
of Divine revelation to their first progenitors as 
impositions practiced upon them by their more 
immediate ancestors. 

Such was the mental condition of the Hebrews 
when Moses undertook, by the direction of God, to 
lead them out of Egypt into the land of Canaan and 
the countries which surrounded it. As Moses indi- 
cated, when receiving commands upon Mount Sinai 



284 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

from authority above, it was, without Divine power, 
a hopeless task. But as we have seen, that power 
was so given that all the incredulity of the Israelites 
was overcome, and under it they began their pilgrim- 
age in defiance and in opposition to the whole forces 
of Egypt. But the miracles of the plagues were 
sufficient to drive from being the last relict of infidelity 
which could possibly inflict any race of mankind. 

It required a vast amount of marvelous signs to 
induce the Jews to undertake the expedition, and 
notwithstanding that these were sufficient for that 
purpose, they nevertheless relapsed into a panthi - 
istic condition of thought when they arrived at the 
coast of the Red sea, Pharaoh being in the rear,*^ 
although the wonderful phenomena which they had 
witnessed had not ceased, for they were led by a 
pillar of fire by night, and one of cloud by day, for 
their instruction as to the course they should pursue 
in making their escape. It was also to show them that 
they were visibly conducted by the power of Heaven. 
And when Pharaoh arrived with his hosts in their rear, 
these pillars changed from the front to the rear, thus 
obscuring the Hebrews from the sight of the Egypt- 
ians.^" Yet they, when surrounded by the sea and 



29 Exodus, ch. 14, verses 10-13; Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews 
book 2, ch. 15, where it would appear that he drew from facta which are not 
In our version of the Bible. 

30 Ibid., chap. 14, verses 19, 20. 



GENEKAL INTRODUCTION. 285 

their enemies, clamored against their leader, and his 
life was in danger. Were there no graves in Egypt, 
that thou hast taken ns to die in the wilderness? is 
the language with which they reproached Moses. ^* 
But Moses exhorted them to remain quiet, and that 
they Bhould witness the salvation of God, "for the 
Egyptians whom ye have seen to-day, ye shall see 
them no more again forever." The Lord then parted 
the waters of the sea, and the Israelites entered into 
the sea upon the bottom and crossed over. When 
they were pursued by their masters, the Lord caused 
the latter to be overwhelmed in the sea, and they were 
there drowned in sight of the Hebrews. ^ ^ When they 
had thus gotten clear of the shackles by which they 
were formerly held in cruel slavery, they found means 
to complain, for the water which they had taken to 
drink was not palatable. But Moses, through that 
power which always stood by him and them, changed 
it to a delectable taste. ^ ^ And, as though their quar- 
relsome nature had no bounds from gratitude, they 
complained to Moses that he had brought them into 
strange lands to die of hunger, when they, in Egypt, 

31 However much this passage may appear to the minds of skeptics to 
militate against the existence of the miracles wrought in Egypt, it is a thing 
with which the author has nothing to do. He addresses, la this chapter, 
believing Christians. 

32 Exodus, oh. 14, passim ; Joskphus' Antiquitiks of the Jews, book 
8, ch. 16. 

33 Exodus, ch. 15, verse 25. 



286 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

were accustomed to sit by the flesh-pots and "eat 
bread to the fnll."^* Moses made known the com- 
plaints of the people, and to satisfy their wants God 
rained food from heaven. ^^ After they had passed 
through the wilderness of Sin they again became des- 
titute of water, upon which Moses smote a rock with 
his rod, and water poured out in great abundance. ^ ^ 
To strengthen their faith, if there were further possi- 
bility of a lurking doubt, God told Moses that He 
would appear in person to the people upon Mount 
Sinai ; all of which they witnessed with great terror. ^ '' 
Just before this last marvelous exhibition of Almighty 
power, it was that the decalogue was given to the 
Jews, and God instructed Moses to say to the multi- 
tude, "Ye have seen that I" [God] "have talked with 
you from heaven," that they might have no apparent 
grounds for doubting the reputed authenticity of the 
commandments, the first of which says, "Thou shalt 
have no other gods before me." ^^ But in the absence 
of Moses, immediately after the rendition of the deca- 
logue and the personal appearance of the Most High 
to the absolute knowledge of the Israelites, they 
rebelled against the first of their laws — ^they caused 



34 Exodus, ch. 16, verses 1-3 inclusive. 

35 Ibid., verses 13-36 inclusive. 

36 Ibid., ch. 17, verses 5, and 6. 

37 Ibid., chap. 19 and 20, passim. 

38 Ibid., ch. 20. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 287 

Aaron to make an image of a calf, which they set np 
as a god and worshiped it.^^ The people, in the pres- 
ence of Moses, were charged, without their dissent, 
of possessing unruly passions ;*" that they had sinned 
a great sin;** and for their evil conduct the Lord 
visited plagues upon them.*^ During their journey- 
ings through the wilderness, the places in which they 
were to pitch their tents were indicated to them by 
a cloud in daylight, and by fire, or its appearance, 
at night. *^ The scarcity of water, and immediately 
afterward its abundance, caused a second time by the 
rod of Moses, gave evidence to the masses that the 
presence and power of Jehovah were still in their 
midst.** Some of the chiefs rebelled against heaven, 
to possess themselves of the priesthood of Aaron. 
Fire was sent down from above and consumed burnt 
ofierings in sight of the multitude, upon altars erected 
by them for that purpose. Yet the sons of Aaron 
mocked the religious ceremonies instituted by the 
Most High, returning by derision to their idolatrous 
worship of former days, and were consumed by the 
flames which they had made and used in contempt of 

39 Exodus, ch. 32, verses 1-6 

40 Ibid., ch. 32, verse 32. 

41 Ibid., verse 31. 

42 Ibid., verse 35. 

43 Numbers, ch. 9, verse 15-18. 

44 Ibid., ch. 20, verse 11. 



288 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

religion.*^ YeJ, notwithstanding these visible pnn- 
ishments upon the wicked, they relapsed into rebel- 
lion against the authority of God, because a part 
of those who had been sent to spy out the land of 
Canaan reported falsehoods about the great stature 
of its inhabitants.*^ They reproached God, saying, 
"Wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this 
land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our 
children should be a prey? Were it not better for 
us to return into Egypt."*'' The whole multitude 
were preparing to stone Moses and Aaron to death, 
but the glorious presence of the Lord in the taber- 
nacle restrained them.*^ 

The conduct of the masses, with three or four 
exceptions, being most wretched and hypocritical, God 
threatened to exterminate the whole multitude, except 
Moses, Aaron, Caleb and those under twenty years of 
age. Their selfishness again opposed the authority of 
Omnipotence, and the earth and fire consumed them 
to the number of two hundred and fifty. * ^ Thereupon 
the anger of the people became violent at this act of 
God, and fourteen thousand and seven hundred were, 

45 JosEPHUs' Antiquities or the Jews, book 3, ch. 8, sec. 7 ; also Levtt- 
ICTJS, ch. 10, verses 1-3. 

46 Numbers, chap. 13, verse 33 

47 Ibid., ch. 14, verse 3. 

48 Ibid., verse 10. 

4g Ibid., ch. U and 16. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION 289 

in consequence, destroyed by the flames whicli God 
sent to punish them and to curb their violent pas- 
sions.^" The Lord sent a plague of fiery serpents 
among the people, which bit them, causing the death 
of many. ^^ 

The above are a few of those manifestations of 
God's marvelous power, which it has been the good 
fortune and glory of but a small portion of mankind 
to behold. The reader may think that these recitations 
are an intrusion upon his time, but it must be borne 
in memory that they formed the true history of the 
Jewish mind from the commencement of the exode to 
their arrival in the promised land. They show what 
were the predominant characteristics of the nation 
during the time in which they took place. The only 
true moral and religious condition of a people can be 
determined by their outward acts, the latter being 
eifects of the controlling elements of the mind, to which 
they are in exact proportion. The author of the Pen- 
tateuch is almost silent as to whether the Jews held 
any communications, and if they did, what their con- 
duct was toward those tribes which inhabited the 
territories through which they passed, leaving us in a 
labyrinth respecting the outward expression of the 
predominant qualities of the former toward the latter. 

50 IBXD., ch. 16, verses 47-49 inclusive 

51 Ibid., cb. 21, verse 6. 

1 9 



I 

290 HISTOKY OF THE DEOLENSION. 

We are, therefore, partly deprived of the evidence by 
which to estimate their morals during the time of their 
escape from bondage. We are also, for the same rea- 
son, not able to ascertain what influence the customs 
and qualities of these idolatrous foreigners had upon 
the inner nature of the Jews to mold a modification 
in their mental condition. But on the question of 
religion, we are most amply provided, as it has been 
made obvious, to exhibit a culture of piety nowhere 
to be found among the inhabitants of any other nation 
of mankind. And we shall hereafter discover that 
Divine Providence continued with them down to the 
destruction of their holy house in the reign of Ves- 
pasian. But we have already found that they were 
rebellious, immoral and wicked to Moses, Aaron and 
Him, who extricated them from an abject condition 
of slavery which almost crushed their lives by its 
severity. Had there been any moral properties in the 
religious faculties, or any moral principles evolved by 
action of the spiritual feelings, wliich tended to modify 
their harsher nature, it should have produced its effect 
in unbounded gratitude to Gfod, and obedience to His 
commands. There certainly were no opportunities for 
skeptical doubts, as they witnessed the most aston- 
ishing miracles, and those, too, the most numerous 
and frequent, which have been experienced by the 
human mind. The protoplast was preceded and 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 291 

followed by such supernatural evidence of its divine- 
original as to expunge the cold and uneasy feelings of 
Pantheism from the most dogged infidel. If there 
were any of those divine influences in the religion of 
this people, which have been ascribed to it by Christ- 
ians, by changing or so re-creating the dispositions of 
the minds of its devotees, or converting one from vice 
to virtue, we should have met some evidence of it in 
the Jewish nation during the exode. But no such 
conclusion can be drawn from their history. On the 
contrary, it most clearly establishes that this theologi- 
cal dogma is without foundation. It is an assumption 
which injures Christianity and retards the progress of 
the better portions of man' s higher nature. This class 
may still adhere to the belief that the later develop- 
ments of Jewish theology, and the modifications 
wrought in succeeding ages by Divine Providence, 
have produced such changes as include within their 
scope those principles which, without them, are 
more immediate consequences of the primitive moral 
powers. We shall soon see what there is in this 
"change of heart" to recommend it to our consider- 
ation, as well as to expose other erroneous assumptions 
which come to us from the middle ages, tinctured with 
their errors, and somewhat modified by the reforma- 
tion. It will also appear that a culture of the religious 
produces none to the moral elements of the mind ; that 



292 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

religion and morality are effects of distinct and inde- 
pendent causes ; that the neglect to educate the moral, 
and bestowing the whole attention upon the religious, 
were the immediate causes of the overthrow of the 
Jewish nation, of the frequent conquests to which it 
was subjected, and of the final dispersion of its people. 

We have traced the principal events, or those, 
rather, which we wished to present, without suppress- 
ing any facts that related to those truths which we 
had sought to discover, from the beginning of their 
pilgrimage in Egypt to their arrival in the country of 
the Canaanites. We shall follow the history of their 
religious and moral condition down to the time of 
their dispersion. 

The Hebrews had no sooner effected their settle- 
ments, than they began to exhibit qualities which 
characterize only the immoral status of savages. 
When there were no people upon whom they could, 
with any reasonable pretexts, make war, they began 
to destroy each other. Sometimes their inordinate 
lusts were the causes of exterminating conflicts, at 
others, love of gain, and their restlessness under all 
governmental regulations. The evil passions of this 
people could not be kept within the limits of reason, 
unless they were ground down in a servile condition ; 
for in disposition of evil they had had no superiors 
in the ancient or the modern ages of the world. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 293 

The amount of rapes, robberies and murders which 
these twelve tribes committed, from their establishment 
in Asia Mftior till the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus 
Vespasian, will excel the same in any other nation 
which has existed for an equal period. The crimes of 
the Jews would be wholly incredible if reported by 
the historians of any other nation ; but since it is the 
narrated confession of their own darkening deeds, it 
cannot by them be called in question. 

The first war which broke out among the twelve 
tribes, was caused by the commission of a rape upon 
the person of the wife of a certain Levite, while he 
was passing from the house of his father-in-law to the 
place of his own residence. At the invitation of a 
resident of Gibeah, the Levite took up lodgings with 
him, supposing, but without sufficient reason, consid- 
ering the moral condition of the Jews, that he and 
his family were safe, as they were among their distant 
relatives. But not long after his entrance into the 
abode of this hospitable stranger, the house was sur- 
rounded by men who demanded the wife of the Levite, 
in violation of the laws of the twelve tribes, which was 
given them through Moses from above. The host of 
the house interceded in behalf of his guests, but could 
not dissuade the rabble from their purpose. They had 
intended to murder the Levite, if it were necessary to 
effect their end. His wife was removed by them, and 



294 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

subjected to the most brutal outrages, after which, in 
the morning, she was allowed to return to her hus- 
band, but immediately afterward expired from the 
effects of her treatment. Those who committed the 
double deed were of the tribe of Benjamin, and inhab- 
ited the city of Gribeah. 

When this act of brutality became known to the 
other tribes of the Israelites, they determined to 
punish the criminals according to those laws by 
which they were all governed. They, therefore, 
made a demand upon the Benjamites for the pos- 
session of the criminals, and attempted their arrest, 
but found that the whole citizens of Gibeah defended 
them, and thus made, the crime of others their own, 
even taking np arms to protect the guilty parties. 
This issue brought on a fierce war which nearly 
exterminated the tribe of the Benjamites, leaving 
only six hundred alive. In the two first battles 
which were fought, forty thousand of the assailants 
were slain ; but on joining battle the third time, those 
engaged on the part of the Benjamites were all 
killed but those excepted. ^^ After the victory over 
the army of Benjamin, the Israelites murdered aU 
the women and children, not saving one alive in 
the city, so all who were left were the combatants 



52 Consult by comparison, Jddqes, ch. 19 and 20, with Josephus" 
ANnQurriES or thx Jews, book 5, ch. 2. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 295 

who made their escape.^' They burnt the city to the 
ground, and, not satisfied with thus far having com- 
mitted a slaughter of the innocents to punish the 
guilty, they passed from the double reality of execu- 
tive justice to pure cruelty itself. Not sufficiently 
gorged with the blood of the innocent victims of 
Gibeah, they proceeded to wreak the same vengeance 
upon all the other cities of the Benjamites, and, 
after murdering the inhabitants, burnt the cities to 
the ground. They "spared neither age nor sex," 
but put all to the sword, old people and young infants, 
those who implored their mercy as well as those who 
defied their strength, all from the cradle to the brink 
of the grave, irrespective of condition, were wiped 
out of existence.^* Then, after refiection, they began 
to be affected, not for the brutalities which they had 
committed, but under the action of fear their intel- 
lectual faculties began to practice arithmetic, to 
calculate their numerical strength, and they dis- 
covered that they had destroyed one-twelfth of their 
military power. They saw that they had wrought 
a great work in favor of their old and inveterate 
enemies, the Canaanites, and should they rely upon 
their own earthly efforts, another success of the same 

53 JOSEPHUS' Antiquities op the Jews, book 5, ch. 8. 

54 Judges, ch. 20, and last passage cited in Josephus' ANTiQUiriEa OF 
TTHE Jews. 



296 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

nature would render their position in the land of the 
heathen wholly untenable. ^ ^ Then, and not till then, 
were they stricken with mortification. We are told 
they wept.^^ 

But there were, notwithstanding, six hundred of 
the tribe of Benjamin left, and, to restore that military 
strength to themselves, as a means of self protection, 
which they had lost by this horrible excision, they 
determined to expunge all the males of another peo- 
ple, seize upon their unmarried women for wives to the 
Benjamite remnant. It is not difiicult for those who 
are committed to the profession of slaughter, to dis- 
cover pretexts for hostilities, and, accordingly, the city 
of Jabesh-gilead was selected as the next victim. An 
army of twelve thousand of their most savage fighting 
men were dispatched, with instructions to spare none 
but the maidens. All the inhabitants, save the four 
hundred maidens, perished at their hearthstones. It 
will readily present itself to the understanding of the 
intelligent reader, the direction which the Jewish mind 
had, in some previous age, gradually taken, and to 
what mental faculties the whole Hebrew nation was 
now being subjected in control. 

Phineas, the high priest, and Hophni, committed 
robberies upon the people, who came up to the temple 

55 Judges, ch. 21, verse 3. 

56 Ibid., verse 2. 



GENEEAL INTEODUCTIOli}- 297 

of the people to worship. They were guilty of the 
commission of other crimes, and finally, their course of 
life being attended with such depravity, they involved 
the Hebrews in a war with the surrounding idolatrous 
nations, ^ "^ by which they were partly deprived of their 
liberty. ^^ By the miraculous powers of God, the 
PhUistines were affrighted and defeated, and the Jews 
restored to their former condition of independence.^* 
But the contagious elements of corruption were per- 
meating all classes of the race, and the principles of 
honor, of probity, and of equity^ by degrees come 
gradually to be regarded, by persons of official sta- 
tions, as a very harmless and proper means by which 
to effect a deception of the just, and thus make them 
subsidiary to the accumulation of riches. The sons of 
Samuel took bribes while they were judges of Israel, 
and rendered their judgments accordingly.^" Thp 
whole people used the venality of Samuel's successors 
as pretexts to draw into their own midst the evil of the 
surrounding nations, and rejected the government of 
the Most High. The element of imitation in the human 
mind is both pleasurable and beneficial when directed 

57 I Samuel, ch. 2, verses 2'3-35 inclusive, and ch. 6, passim : also compare 
JosEPHUS' ANTiQtnriES OF THE JEWS, book 5, ch. 10 and 11. 

58 JosEPHUS' Antiqutties of the Jews, book 6, ch. 3, and I Samuei., 
ch. 5 and 6. 

59 I SAMtjEL, ch. 7, verse 10. Compare Joskphus' Antiquities of the 
Jews, book 6, ch. 2. 

60 I SamueIi, ch. 8, verses 1-6 : God's directions to Samuel. 



298 HISTOliY OF THE DECLENSION". 

to ennobling objects, but is more than demoralizing 
when used in the appropriation of those manners 
which are the production of vicious principles. They 
desired a form of government, fashionable with the 
people of the east, notwithstanding the demoralizing 
influence which it had on the morals of mankind. 
Samuel informed them of the oppressions they would 
be subjected to in the event that a king were to reign 
over them. But they preferred bondage to freedom, 
if rectitude were a dependence of the latter. As the 
conditions of an absolute government were founded in 
injustice, it was but fair to presume that the monarch 
would wink at the vices of the multitude. By the 
inauguration of the monarchy, we find that they had 
added new troubles to old difficulties. For immedi- 
ately subsequent to the anointment of Saul as king, 
the multitude exhibited a disposition, and urged the 
propriety, of slaying all of that party who were 
opposed to the government of a kingdom ; and were 
only repressed by the greater humanity of the sover- 
eign."* Thus they rejected the sovereignty of God, 
although He had led them from a lowly and enslaved 
condition into one of prosperous independence. 

Among them vice and wickedness increased with 
their prosperity. We do not understand that there 
was any difference between this people in these respects 

6i JosEPHUS' ANTiQurriKS OF THE JEWS, book 6, ch. 5. 



GEISHERAL INTRODUCTION. 299 

and those nations that surrounded them, and were 
devoted to a false, to a pagan religion, except in so far 
as the Hebrews had not an equal degree of morality. 
The surrounding tribes, in their wars, disdained the 
brutality of murdering women and children when 
taken prisoners, ^ ^ But when the Israelites took pris- 
oners of war, they put them through a cruel torture, 
sawed them asunder, dragged them to death under 
harrows, chopped them to pieces with axes, and burnt 
them alive. ® ^ This was during the administration of 
king David. We are informed by the sacred authors 
that this was the course pursued in all of their wars 
against the children of Ammon. ^* But before David's 
reign, at the organization of the monarchy, Saul was 
crowned, with an obligatory understanding, that he 
should live a godly and moral life, doing everything 
according to the decalogue, the supreme laws of the 
land, and for the prosperity of all Israel. Yet the 
royal household and Saul were corrupted ; they were 
envious, jealous, and indulged the feelings of hatred, 
following the last up with a spirit of revenge. The 



62 "The third day that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and 
Zlklag, and smitten Ziklag and burnt it with fire ; and had taken the women 
captives that were therein ; they slew not any, either great or small, but 
carried them away. So David and his men came to the city, sind, behold, it 
was burnt with fire ; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters 
were taken captives."— I Samtjel, ch. 30, verses 1-3. 

63 II Samuel, ch. 12, verse 31. 

64 Ibid. 



300 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

valor of David had made him a person of distinction 
with the masses, and, in conseqnence, the prince 
liated his existence and desired to destroy it. Saul 
knew well the law "he that sheddeth man's blood, 
by man his blood shaU be shed." Yet it did 
not deter Saul from his wretched deeds, nor stay his 
own hand from the commission of murder. For, 
although he failed in his assault upon young David, 
he directed assassins to put him out of the way. ^^ 
But Saul's cruelty was the cause of his destruction. 
Although David's character was none of the best in 
his youth, it became worse after he was elevated to 
regal dignity. He was guilty of crimes which should 
shame any German boor out of all pretensions to 
chastity and to compassion. He committed adul- 
tery;'^ and he murdered Uriah that he might keep 
up a continued and incontinent interview with his 
widow.®"* 

David, through his great piety, took judicious 
pains to educate his children up to a zealous observ- 
ance of religion, yet Amnon committed a rape upon 
his own sister Tamar, and was slain by his brother. ^^ 
Absalom made war upon his aged father, and fell in 
the conflict. The people, from the least to the greatest 

65 I Samuel, ch. 19, verses 10-24. 

66 II SAMirar-, ch. 11. 

67 Ibid. 

68 Ibid., ch. 13, verses 13, 13 and 14. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 301 

in the Jewish nation, were extremely cruel, and pre- 
sented a very savage appearance for those whom the 
public have put forward the claims of possessing 
moral principles. Their vicious course ashamed the 
most iniquitous inhabitants of Asia Minor. Solomon 
attempted the life of Jeroboam, because a prophet had 
foretold that the latter should become king in place of 
the former.^* !N"or did God, during all this time, 
withhold the manifestations of his power. After the 
temple was finished, the Lord filled the house with 
the eflPiilgence of His own glory, so that thousands of 
people saw that no one could enter it in consequence 
of the brightness of the light.''" But Solomon was 
a libertine, and because he allowed his wives to influ- 
ence him to worship the gods of their country, he was 
pronounced worse than king David in moral princi- 
ples, although the latter was convicted by his acts 
of the crime of murder. The kingdom was not rent 
out of the possession of the posterity of Solomon 
because of his libertinism, but for having set up 
idols to please his courtezans.''^ Jeroboam and 
Rehoboam, the successors of Solomon, were immoral 
and wicked, although they were religious. Rehoboam 
was a tyrant and oppressed the people;''^ he was a 

('<) I Kings, ch. U, verse 40. 

70 II Chronicles, ch. 7. 

71 I EoNGS, ch. 11. 

7» II Ohroniglbs, ch. 10, 11 and 12. 



303 IIISTOIIY OF THE DECLENSION. 

libertine, as lie had eighteen wives and sixty concu- 
bines.''^ Jeroboam was unjust and dishonest toward 
God, as he, after the Lord had made him king, 
rebelled against His authority, overturning and driv- 
ing out of the kingdom the priesthood which Omnip- 
otence had established.''* He was also a tyrant j 
he forced the people to worship the images of two 
calves.'^ Abijah, successor of Rehoboam to the king- 
dom of Judah, was as tyrannical, overbearing and 
oppressive as his predecessor ;''• in violation of the 
laws which he was crowned to administer, he kept 
fourteen courtezans.'''' And, finally, in the whole line 
of kings of Israel and Judah, from Saul to Abijah, we 
are relieved by finding one virtuous prince in the per- 
son of Asa. Yet it is not an easy matter to discover 
what his moral qualities were, for the Jews considered 
their kings remarkably just if they did not disturb the 
order of the priesthood and reduce the principles of 
thugs to too extensive a practice. 

Nadab, son of Jeroboam, ruled with such tyranny 
that his subjects rebelled against his authority and 
assassinated him. He was succeeded by the person 
who slew him; and Baasha conducted the government 

73 II Chronicles, ch. 11, verse 21. 

74 Ibid., ch. 13, verse 9. 

75 Ibid., verse 8. 

76 I Kings, ch. 15, verse 3. 

77 II Chronicles, ch. 13, verse 31. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 303 

for twenty-four years, with all the tyranny that the 
Jews had ever suffered, and was a terror to all within 
his dominions.'^ Elah, his son and successor, was 
killed in a drunken debauchery two years after he 
came to the succession. "^ » Zimri, who headed the 
revolt which disposed of the preceding sovereign, 
only reigned seven days, meeting the fate of his pre- 
decessor.^" Omri was, if anything, more vicious, 
more tyrannical, than Baasha, leading the nation 
into his own degrading vices, and, with few excep- 
tions, the whole people became corrupt. ^ ^ But Ahab, 
Omri's son, was also crafty and selfish; following the 
popular manners of the times, he set the laws of 
Jehovah at defiance. Whatever was the prevailing 
fashion of the age he adopted, rejecting all just laws, 
both moral and divine. Whatever were the popular 
notions of the inhabitants of the east respecting relig- 
ion and government, he endorsed and made his own. 
By pandering to the vanities of the age, he became 
a hypocrite, and enforced the expensive religious cere- 
monials of idolatrous nations. He put the priesthood 
which adhered to the commands of God to death, so 
that only one was left in that whole dominion of 



78 I Kings, ch. 15. 

79 IBIB., ch. 16, verses 9 and 10. 

80 Ibid., verse 18. 

81 Ibis., verses 25 and 26 



304 HISTORY OF THE DEOIiENSION. 

Israel. ^2 He was more cruel than all that "had 
reigned before him."^^ 

Jehoram violated the laws of his kingdom, and 
by his example brought the whole nation into the 
same condition of morals;^* he murdered many digni- 
taries of state ;^^ he murdered his brothers Azariah, 
Jehiel, Zechariah, Michael and Shephatiah. ^ ^ Aliaz- 
iah was immoral, unjust and wicked, and for his 
oppressions was slain by his subjects, ^ ' Jehu mur- 
dered Jehoram and Ahaziah, all the children of each 
of them and the relations both lineally and collater- 
ally;'^ he directed forty- two persons, who had done 
him and the people no harm, to be put to death, and 
they were beheaded ; he murdered the whole relations 
of Ahab, personally superintending the murder of 
Ahab' s sons, seventy in number. The cruelty was so 
atrociously great he made an apology to the public, 
and cast the horror of the crime upon the disposition 
of the Almighty. ^^ He slew the ministers of Ahaz- 
iah;^" he murdered Jezebel, ^^ because she pronounced 

82 I Kings, ch. 19, verse 14. 

83 Ibid., ch. 16, verses 30-34 inclusive. 

84 II Chbonicles, ch. 31, verse 13. 

85 Ibid., verse 4. 

86 Ibid. 

87 Ibid., ch. 22. 

88 II Kings, ch. 10. 

89 Ibid., verse 9. 

90 II Kings, ch. 9. 

91 Ibid., verses 30-37 inclusive. 



GENERAL INTEODUOTIOIT. 305 

the course of Jehu to be that of treason ;®2 he allowed 
not the clergy of a different belief to escape from 
liis cruel tyranny, but hypocritically murdered every 
one;*^ and finally, after he had thus butchered about 
one-tenth of the whole kingdom, he pursued the 
course of a libertine, and about the only good act 
with which he could be accredited, consisted in, and 
terminated with, his death. 

Jehoash was a virtuous prince, but the predisposi- 
tion of the people for bloodshed consigned him to that 
fate which was usual with the kings of the Hebrews.^* 
Jehoahaz, king of Israel, followed the brutality of his 
father, Jehu;*^ became a devotee to the vices of Jero- 
boam;^® the whole people relapsed into the idolatry 
of the surrounding nations, and were become corrupt. ^ "^ 

Azariah' s noble conduct during his administration 
relieved the dynasties of the Hebrews from much of 
the odium of those degrading vices and brutal charac- 
teristics which had ever been, with very few exceptions, 
concomitant elements of king and people. But during 
his reign over the tribe of Judah, Zachariah came, by 
lawful inheritance, to the throne of the Israelitish 

Q2 II Ktngs, ch. 9, verse 81. 

93 Ibid., ch. 10. 

94 n KrNGs, ch. 12, verae 30. 

95 Ibid., oh. 13, verse 2. 

96 Ibid., ch. 13. 

97 Ibid. 

•: 



306 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION 

nation. Zachariah, nevertheless, conducted the gov- 
ernment with such tyrannic power and severity toward 
the rights of the people, that he was assassinated six 
months after he began to rule. • ^ Shallum became the 
usurper, as he was the assassin, * ' and for these had 
the good fortune to live thirty days, ^ ° ° being killed 
by Menahem, the commander of Zachariah' s army. 
The last misruled the people for ten years, beginning 
by murdering all the citizens in one of the cities 
because they did not surrender to him at discre- 
tion.^"^ He did not even spare the infants of the 
place. ^°2 Such barbarities could not have been per- 
petrated had not the prince been supported by a large 
majority of the people, whose character was as detest- 
able as his own. He was succeeded by his son, 
Pekahiah, in depravity of character as well as in the 
government of the nation. If the latter could not 
excel the savage cruelty of the former, the sequel 
showed that he had equaled it. ^ ° ^ But the ambition 
of aspiring despots put an end to his tyranny,^ °* and 
if he were not executed according to law, he met with. 



98 Compare JosEPntJS' Antiquities of the Jews, book 9, ch. 11, with 
II Kings, ch. 15. 

99 Ibid. 

100 Ibid. 

loi Ibid., verse 16. 
I03 Ibid. 

103 Ibid., verses 23-24. 

104 Ibid., verse 25. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION". 307 

by it, no more than his reward. The people's thirst 
for bloodshed supported the illegal measures of the 
assassin.^*" The acme of bmtal behavior had been 
attained; and although neither Israel nor Judah pos- 
sessed individuals whose talents enabled them to 
outstrip their predecessors in the refined arts of 
oppression, we know by history that they could 
rival and imitate the coarser qualities of their 
crimes.*"® For twenty years the Israelites sub- 
mitted to the despotic rule of Pekah, ' ° ' and if the 
people were oppressed, if their pure social rela- 
tions were destroyed, if their money were unlaw- 
fully extorted from them by the government, they 
balanced the account by fraud upon each other, or 
upon the tribes, states and nations in the vicinity. 
Whatever were the customs, fashions and condition 
of morals at the courts of the kings, became appro- 
priated by the masses and was the rule by which they 
were governed. As corruption thus became popular, 
all classes of the twelve tribes were polluted, vice 
being antagonistic to virtue, the latter was extin- 
guished, the former being in great predominance. 

But as the assasination of the kings of Israel and 
of Judah, had become a habit of the people, Pekah 
was removed by the same measures which had 

105 II Kings, cb. 15, verse 25. 

106 Ibid. 

107 Ibid. 



308 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

terminated the lives of most of the sovereigns of the 
Hebrews.*"^ Regicide entitled and qnalified its author 
for the vacant throne, to which he immediately suc- 
ceeded; and Hoshea became king of Israeli ^^ As 
many of the former kings of Judah and Israel had, 
at different times, exterminated the priesthood which 
ministered to the spiritual wants of the Hebrews 
according to the laws of their sacred office, ^^'^ the 
nation degenerated ; adopting the idolatrous religions, 
passions and corruptions of foreign states, forced 
upon them by the crown, they at first acquiesced, 
after a time admired, and finally were captivated by 
those debaucheries to which the Jews, in the land of 
the orient, were ever predisposed. The reign of 
Ahaz throughout was characterized by the burning 
of innocent children alive, to worship the gods of 
the Phoenicians. He was succeeded by Hezekiah, 
for whom the laws of nature had done much to 
restore to a normal condition, in spite of defective 
hereditary qualities and the corrupting vices of the 
times. As far as relates to the personal qualities 
of Hezekiah, and a few others in the twelve tribes, 
the natural laws restored those internal causes which 



loS Compare Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, book 9, ch. 13, with 
11 Kings, ch. 15. 

log Ibid. < 

no I Kings, ch. 19, verse 18. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 309 

insure moral principles, and which external phe- 
nomena had well nigh completely extinguished. It 
was during the reigns of Hoshea and Hezekiah that 
the ten tribes were supplanted, and forever lost to 
all knowledge of the rest of the Hebrews, according 
to predictions made by prophets centuries before. ^ ^ ^ 
Manasseh succeeded Hezekiah to but one quality, 
the throne of his father. Farther than their official 
stations there was no resemblance between them. 
Manasseh introduced polytheism into the nation, 
made vice more popular, and plunged the people 
more deeply into it than had ever been known to 
exist with the surrounding heathens.^* ^ Those vices 
which he introduced continued, for fifty-five years, 
to act upon what moral properties remained in the 
people, till they, as a nation, became more immoral 
and degraded than the Sodomites. He murdered all 
the priesthood of Aaron, and by his slaughters of 
the innocents "filled Jerusalem with blood from one 
end to another." 113 ii {q remarkable that such 
monsters as Manasseh should die natural deaths 
among a people as turbulent and base as the Hebrews 
had become. It is still more remarkable that those 

111 Compare Josephus* Antiquities of the Jews, book 9, ch. 14, with 
II Kings, ch. 17. 

112 II Kings, ch. 21. 

113 Compare Josephits' Antiquities of the Jews, book 10, ch. 3, with 
II Kenqs, ch. 21, verse 16, 



310 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION 

animal faculties wliicli he had wholly and only 
exercised, save his religious, and caused the people, 
by imitating his example, to j)erpetrate the most 
brutal outrages toward their fellows, had not extin- 
guished his life in the beginning of his administration.. 
His son, Amon, disciplined in all the corruptions of 
his father and of his age, was slain by his own 
subjects for those cruelties which he had inflicted 
upon them.*** But the majority of the inhabitants 
were indignant at the murder of Amon, and slew 
his assassins.**^ It follows, from this, that they 
endorsed the character of Amon, and also, that they 
had not done so had they not been as vicious as he. 
The multitude then placed Josiah upon the throne. 
Yet he, although pronounced just and righteous, 
slew all the clergy who did not follow the religion 
instituted by Moses. * * ^ Those kings who were believed 
to be moral by the Jewish writers, invariably slew 
or murdered all the ecclesiastics of opposing faiths. 
So that from Saul to Josiah, the whole kings of Judah 
and of Israel were engaged in the occupation of mur- 
der. The whole Jewish nation, not included in the 
slaughter, endorsed these acts and carried them into 
effect at the request of the kings. Whenever a person 

114 Compare Joskphus' ANTiQiHTiKa of the Jews, book 10, ch. 4, with 
11 Kings, ch. 21. 

115 Ibid. 

u6 n Kings, ch. 23, verse 30. 



aENERAL INTRODUCTION. 311 

was elevated to the throne of either Jndah or Israel, 
he became intolerant to all religions opinions bnt his 
own. He did not allow the clergy the privilege of 
recantation, but immediately pnt them to death ; and 
as often as the opinion of the crown changed with 
each succession, there was to his side, a reversal of 
apparent belief in the people. But the ecclesiastics, 
under all circumstances, must suffer death. The 
hierarchical portion of the government of these kings 
exercised greater severity toward dissentients than 
did the papacy in the middle ages. In the time of 
Ahab we have an instance of this, when Elijah told 
the Lord that all the clergy were destroyed by the 
government, that he was the only one that remained, 
and that they were seeking him to bring him to 
execution. * * '' But the slaughter of the Aaronic priest- 
hood, during the reign of Ahab, was partly retorted 
by Elijah when he excited the multitude to slay 
the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. * * ^ When 
there was an alternation of religion, of polytheism 
with monotheism, in the person of the sovereign, 
there was one also with the people. Whichever 
became the pleasure of the king was fashionable 
with the masses, and those who held on to their faith 
were swept away as if it were a matter of justice. 



117 I KiKQS, ch. 18, verae 23, and ch. 19, yerse 1*. 

118 Ibid, ch. 18. 



312 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION 

And thus with the Jews virtue was wiped out by 
hypocrisy. It was impossible to exist and at the 
same time oppose the professed belief of the majority, 
although it is evident, from the history of the twelve 
tribes, that for more than two-thirds of the period 
which elapsed from the reign of Saul to that of Josiah, 
the whole nation was a body of moral hypocrites. We 
have seen that they not only adopted the religion, but 
the form of government common to neighboring states, 
because they were more fashionable in this portion 
of the world. Fashionable religions and popular 
forms of government were more acceptable to the 
masses than those which emanated from above. It 
has been shown that from the establishment of the 
Hebrews in Phoenicia, after their escape from bondage, 
that there was a constant degeneracy of the moral 
faculties of the mind. 

But during these rebellions of the Hebrews against 
the government of Jehovah ; during the time in which 
they were divided up into parties for the commis- 
sion of thefts, frauds, robberies, rapes and murders, 
there was a constant visitation of G-od's marvelous 
power. Miracles continued to be wrought by God 
through his prophets before the people, so that the 
evidence of a divine administration was not taken 
upon the statement of others in distant ages, but was 
brought within the absolute knowledge of the Jews. 



GENERAL INTRODXJOTION. 313 

There must, therefore, have been a perfect conviction 
of this truth; and if, under such circumstances, the 
people degenerated from a moral condition, what bet- 
ter can be hoped from it eighteen hundred years after 
the theocracy has altogether ceased to exist. If the 
Hebrews had every reason to believe in the existence 
of a Grod, and in the institution of a thearchy, that 
then, in pursuance of these convictions, they were 
accustomed to religious exercises in feeling during 
worship; if, we say, under all these circumstances, 
they relapsed into depravity and the practice of all 
forms of vice, it conclusively establishes that a relig- 
ious culture of the mind does not work a discipline of 
the moral. We have seen with what miraculous signs, 
during God's guidance of them, they were led, from 
the birth of Abraham to their arrival in the promised 
land, and also the condition of their morals and of 
their religion during that long period. We have also 
shown what their moral condition was, from the estab- 
lishment of the theocracy to the supplanting of the ten 
tribes and the captivity of Judah. It now remains 
to discover what was the evidence upon which they 
could depend for a belief in divine revelations, from 
the beginning of the thearchy to the conquest of 
Judea by Babylonia. 

When the Israelites had become firmly settled in 
the land assigned to them by Moses, and their slavish 



314 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

minds had begun to ape the foolish manners of the 
Amorites in religious ceremonials, disregarding what- 
ever pertained to truth and to justice, they abandoned 
the charges of the decalogue. For reproof and correc- 
tion of their ways, the Lord appeared to them through 
the agency of an angel. It was a personal appearance 
to the majority of the Israelites, and "they lifted up 
their voices and wept."*^^ An angel of the Lord 
appeared to Gideon and conversed with him face to 
face;^''" but when he was overcome by the marvel- 
ous visitation and serious condition in which he was 
placed, the Lord God spoke to him and said, "Peace 
be unto thee; fear not; thou shalt not die."^^^ The 
Lord first charged him to throw down the altars 
erected by the people for the purposes of worshiping 
Baal, and build one in its stead, ^^^ upon which to 
offer sacrifices to the God of Israel. ^^s Qq^ mani- 
fested his presence personally by the trial which 
Gideon made with the fleece ;'2* but the most signal 
exhibition of Jehovah's presence was the manner in 
which Gideon destroyed the hosts of the allies, as God 
had previously told him He would do it, that all Israel 
might know that Omnipotence had not yet deserted 

H9 Judges, ch. 3, verses 1-6; B. C. 1425. 

120 Ibid., ch. 6, verses 11-33 iaclusive; B. C. 1358. 

121 Ibid., verse 23. 
laa Ibid., verse 25. 

123 Ibid., verse 26. 

124 Ibid., verses 3G-10. 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 315 

tlie HebrewsJ*^ Three hundred men, with pitchers 
and trumpets as arms of attack, slaughtered one 
hundred and twenty thousand of the enemy.* 2* All 
these marvelous things came within the positive 
knowledge of the people. ^2** 

It was foretold that Samson would be born with 
such physical power as to be able to oppose and 
defeat an army. It came to fulfillment according to 
prediction; being so much greater than anything which 
was human, all Israel and Judah knew that it was 
immediately derived from God. * ^ ^ God appeared and 
conversed with Samuel 1165 B. C.;*^' and the revela- 
tions made to Samuel were fulfilled in such manner 
as to convince all Israel that he was a prophet of 
the Lord. The Lord raised up Samuel fix)m the 
grave to converse with Saul in the presence of three 
witnesses, and Samuel told Saul that he and his sons 
should sleep in the silence of death on the following 
day, 130 1056 B. C. In the year 951 B. C. Jehu 
prophesied that the whole dynasty of Baasha should 
be extinguished by the sword. ^^^ They were all 
destroyed twenty-one years afterward. '^^ 

125 Judges, ch. 7. 

126 Ibid., ch. T, verso 19, with ch. 8, verse 10. 

127 Ibid., ch. 7i verses 20, 21 and 22. 

12S See chapters 13, 11, 15 and 16, passim. 

129 I Samtjix, ch. 3. 

130 Ibid., ch. 28. 

X31 I Kings, ch. 16, verse 7. 
132 Ibid., verses 10, 11 and 13. 



316 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Ahab rebelled againfit tlie ecclesiastical laws of 
the Hebrews as well as against the rights of man. 
For his acts in violation of the former, the Lord sent 
Elijah to him to rebuke him and the people, with 
power from above to withhold dew and rain from 
the earth in the region of the Hebrews. Ahab and 
his conrt were told by Elijah there should not be 
dew nor rain but according to his word. '^^ And 
accordingly Elijah "smote" the land with drouth 
into the third year, ^3" so that there was a great 
scarcity of both water and provender for man and 
beast. *^' Elijah prayed for rain, and it poured 
down in abundance. ^ ^ ^ Elijah called fire down from 
heaven, by which he burned up the sacrifice, wood 
and water, *^' and thus demonstrated, by the drouth 
and the fire, (the last before four hundred priests of 
Baal and a large multitude of people,) that the God 
of Abraham did still preside over the world, that he 
still wrought miracles to convince mankind of his 
being and his administration, 906 B. C. The people 

133 "And Elijah the Tlshbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said 
unto Aliab, 'As the Lord God of Israel liveth before whom I stand, there shall 
not be dow nor rain these years, but according to my word.' ' — I Kings, ch. 17. 

134 "And it came to pass, after many days, that the word of he Lord came 
tp Elijah in the third year" [of the drouth] " saying, 'Go show thyself unto 
Ahab, and I will send rain upcn the earth.' "—Ibid., chap. 18, verse 1. 

13s Compare Ibid., verses 3-7, with Josephxjs' Antiquities op the Jews, 
book 8, ch. 13, sec, 4. 

136 Ibid., ch, 18, verse 45. 

137 Ibid., verses 30-39. 



HISTOllY OF THE DECLENSION. 317 

were so firmly convinced by the testimony of the 
miracle that they, at the instance of the prophet, 
slew all the priests who ministered to Baal."^ 

God, through the intercession of Elijah, burned 
up one hundred men;i3 9 jn^e foretold Ahaziah's death, 
which immediately afterwards occurred ;^*° Elijah 
parted the waters of the river Jordan, he and his 
disciple passing over on dry ground, ^ " ^ 896 B. C. ; 
and, in the sight of fifty-one men was separated by 
a whirlwind from earth, and taken up into heaven 
by a chariot of fire.''"*' 

God, through the sacred office of Isaiah, answered 
the prayer of Hezekiah, and destroyed his enemies 
to the number of one hundred and eighty-five thou- 
sand, * * ' 710 B. C. ; the prayer and the wonderful 
manner in which the Hebrews were d.elivered out of 
their distress being known to all Israel. * * * Before the 
taking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, Jeremiah, 
the prophet, foretold it to the king and the people ;** = 
Isaiah uttered a prophecy to the same purport, about 
one hundred and forty years before the prediction of 

138 I Kings, ch. 18, verse 40. 

139 Compare II Kings, ch. 1, with JosEPHUS' Antiquities of the Jews, 
book 9, ch. 2. 

140 Ibid. 

141 Ibid., ch. 2, verses 7 and 8. 

142 Ibid., verses 7-13. 

143 Ibid., ch. 19. 

144 Ibid. 

14s Compare Jeremiah, ch. 25, with Josephus' Antiquities of the 
Jews, book 10, ch. 7. 



318 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Jeremiali.*<* Jerusalem was captured and destroyed 
in the manner which God had made known to the 
Hebrews.**'' Jeremiah prophesied the return of the 
Jews, which took place according to his word,'*' 
seventy years afterward. 

Such were the marvelous phenomena which occur- 
red from time to time after the exode to the captivity 
of the twelve tribes of the Hebrews. Those miracles 
which had taken place were convincing evidence of 
God's existence, government, and his special inter- 
vention in behalf of man. All this was sufficient to 
induce any people to believe in religion, to obey its 
ordinances and commandments. 

Thus we have seen what were the moral and 
religious characters of the Hebrew nations, from their 
first conquest of the Canaanites, 1444 B. C, to the 
Babylonish captivity, about 590 B. C. At no time 
during this period did they relapse into infidelity, for 
they were devoted to the religion of their fathers, or 
to that of polytheism, the then prevailing belief of the 
nations of western Asia. They constantly worshiped 
the God of the Hebrews, or the gods of the surround- 
ing heathens. As the inhabitants of Asia were more 



146 Compare Isaiah, ch. 1, with Josephus' Antiquixebs of the Jbws, 
book 10, cb. 2. 

47 II Chronicles, ch. 36. 

148 Compare Jeremiah, ch. 25, with Danzel, ch. 5. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 319 

nnmerons than the Jews, and their ideas of religion 
therefore more popular, the Jews frequently adopted 
them at the mere indication of the court of their 
kings. The miracles were true, according to their 
testimony, and they must have been convinced, not 
only of a divine revelation, but of an administration 
and special interventions in their behalf from above. 

Having related those facts which, by way of proof, 
bear upon the religious and moral condition of the 
Hebrews down to the time of their captivity in 
Babylon, we shall omit the narration of about four 
hundred years of the history of these two elements 
of their character, taking it up just before the begin- 
ning of their war against the Romans. It appears to 
us that at the time to which we have last made 
reference, they had arrived at a condition of turpitude 
which is wholly unparalleled by any other race or age. 

Just before the time the war broke out between 
the Jews and the Romans, the former were in a state 
of social disorganization. Everything had the appear- 
ance, and took the direction of a final reckoning; 
not only the different states, but the people within 
the many cities gave evidence, by their conduct, of 
being seized with a peculiar madness to rob and 
murder all natives as well as foreigners. It naturally 
occurs as something remarkable that the suicide of 
this people was deferred so long, that they had not 



320 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

disappeared by the complete and perfect destruction 
of themselves. The only faculties of their minds 
which they had cultivated were the religious and the 
animal, and this having continued for fifteen centuries, 
they were wrought into a condition, characteristic of 
the fiercest species of the animal creation. From a 
theological stand-point it is evident that, for some 
ulterior object, an invincible power chained those 
fierce elements, suppressing their fatal manifestation, 
and postponed their disastrous effects to a more 
distant time. They were as religious as when they 
settled in the dominions of Pharaoh. They were 
scrupulous in their attendance upon the religious 
ceremonies which were rife among them ; they con- 
stantly, according to their ecclesiastical laws, offered 
sacrifices, observed feasts, fasts and the Sabbath. In 
a word, they obeyed, as near as can be determined by 
outward appearance, the canons transmitted to them 
by Moses and Aaron. Centuries before the time of 
which we now write, they were constantly rebelling 
against their ecclesiastical laws, and murdering the 
prophets. But as we approach that period in which 
they present to our contemplation the most vicious 
natures and the most cruel dispositions, their conduct 
brings into strong contrast with their base character 
the characteristics of habitual piety and devotion. 
The government of Rome, which held them in 



GETTERAL INTRODUCTION. 321 

snbjection, was nnable to suppress the disorders, riots, 
robberies and murders which were constantly occurring 
in the territory of the two tribes. The Roman power, 
although strongly impregnated at this early day with 
those corrupting elements which finally produced its 
overthrow, was sufficiently equitable in its administra- 
tion, to be a blessing to a more savage and barbarous 
people which the Jews proved to be. Inordinate 
avarice, licentiousness, a peculiar characteristic of the 
Jews, political and ecclesiastical ambition, distinction 
in private and public life, goaded the masses to the 
commission of all sorts of crimes to attain their desires. 
Armed bands, composed of men believing and observ- 
ing the religion of their ancestors in ceremonials, were 
prevalent in all parts of Judea. But the highways 
were infested by no worse men in point of depravity, 
than those of the Jewish tribes who exercised the 
functions of civil administration over their own peo- 
ple, by the permission of the Caesars. The time had 
arrived when the government preferred the associa- 
tion of outlaws to that of just men and more perfect 
organizations. All classes, from the boor to the high 
priest, pressed in one direction and toward the same 
object ; all classes were readily persuaded of the 
justice of the cause of those litigants whose purses 
were the most amply supplied. All grades were 
accessible to bribery, and from the nature of their 

21 



322 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

affairs, the prevalence of tlie outlaw gangs and their 
snccessfal operations, it is fair to presume that they 
had silent confederates in official stations of the civil 
government and in ecclesiastical robes of the hier- 
archy. While each vied with the other, and zealously 
contended to win social and public esteem through 
religious devotion, we discover a degree of cruelty and 
injustice which did not characterize the nation five 
centuries before. Their cruelty was not exercised 
upon the guilty, but upon the innocent. Their frauds 
were practiced upon those only who were unable to 
penetrate the vail which obscured their designs or 
comprehend the status of their moral condition. The 
devotee of justice, had he dared to act in reformatory 
measures, would have found himself confronted by 
powerful enemies in the persons of political and eccle- 
siastical functionaries. Although the curmudgeon 
withheld bread from the starving widow and orphan, 
his calling was made respectable by the previous fall 
of the people into greater vices. The worst forms of 
depravity pervaded all relations, and perjury, incon- 
tinence, soricide, uxorcide, paricide, fratricide, and 
filicide were become common to the knowledge of the 
masses of the nation, and no longer curdled the blood 
of the fastidious. As all ranks, ages, and sexes, 
seemed to be possessed of an unlimited disposition for 
the commission of evil, the devout, for want of better 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 323 

reasons, might argne that the entire nation was forced 
on to self-destruction by demons of the nether world. 
If the agents of Nero were oppressive to the Jews, if 
they stirred up strife among them, it was because they 
found the latter parasitical and feloniously predis- 
posed. Had the people been moral, the subsidiary 
interests of Neronic power in that portion of the globe 
would have been weak and ineffectual. But the gov- 
ernors of the Roman tyrant readily discovered by the 
condition of the people, that whatever acts of barbarity 
they were disposed to enforce, would be endorsed by 
all those of the Hebrews who were allowed to share in 
the spoils, or in the apparent honors of position. If 
neither of these were accorded to the learned, to the 
rich, or to those of illustrious birth, they were known 
to be silently assisting the marauding bands in their 
raids upon the masses, or actively and publicly 
engaged in the burning of cities and the plunder of 
towns. Although the Roman governors were not 
reluctant to remove, by violence, the persons of what 
few private individuals there were who dared to oppose 
the encroachments of the executive upon their own 
peculiar stations, yet they always found at hand 
among the Jews, servile and ready slaves to carry 
their bloody measures into execution. >8 2 

152 See the case of the high priest, Jonathan, when assassins were hired 
by Felix to treacherously put him to death.— JosEPHUS' Antiquities of the 
Jews, booli 20, ch. 8, sec. 5. 



324 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

The most intimate friend of Jonathan, for a large 
sum of money given to him by the procurator, plotted 
his death and thus caused his murder. * ^ ° The friends 
of the high priest were in friendly communication with 
marauding gangs and murderers. ' ^ * These outlaws 
were alternately employed by the government and by 
the pious friends and relatives of those in exalted sta- 
tions in the church. *^^ Although the employed had 
less pride, he had not less morality than his employer. 
Yet the robbers of the nation were accustomed to go 
up to the temple for the double purpose to worship 
God and to secretly stab those whom they were 
employed by reward to destroy, *^^ If one in the 
holy city had enemies who were possessed of means, 
he stood in fear of being murdered by hired assassins, 
either in his own house, in the streets, or even in 
the temple.*^* Persons of ecclesiastical pretensions 
imposed upon the multitude, and while the latter 
were deluded into the wilderness, they were slain by 
their kindred from the city. * ^ ^ 

The robbers were not wholly in the employ of 
wealthy civilians; they were retained by the high 

150 JosEPHEUs' Antiquities of the Jews, book 20, ch. 8, sec. 5. 

151 Ibid. 

152 Ibid. 

153 Ibid. 

154 Ibid. 

155 Ibid., bcc. C. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION 325 

priests, by whom also they were led on to riot, and 
by force to seize upon the highest positions in the 
church for their ecclesiastical leaders.*" The cov- 
etous nature of the liigh priests was not modified by 
the condition of the victim, but by the elements of 
their own fear ; might made right, and as the defense- 
less could offer no resistance, the primates of the 
church y)reyed upon the poor and the weak. Nor 
did they have regard to the relation of consan- 
guinity, of friends or foes, for whoever fell into their 
hands was stripped of whatever he possessed, and 
while he thus became destitute, his former goods, 
although of little worth, went to swell and increase 
the riches of the highest and most exalted men of 
God. They left nothing, but in many instances took 
all ; and one would naturally suppose that they must, 
through mercy, have spared their clerical brethren, 
but they did not; they took, by armed force, the 
grain off the thrashing-floors of the poorest priests, 
which was in preparation to sustain their own lives 
and those of their families. The consequence was 
that vast numbers of the latter, together with their 
families, starved to death.*" 

The high priests, backed by those outlaws whom 
thc'y had retained, fought small battles against each 

156 JosEPHus' Antiquities of the Jaws, book 20, ch. 8, sec. 8. 
X57 Ibis. 



326 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSIO]N\ 

other, to obtain the perquisites and the ecclesiastical 
honors of the church. *^^ Yet they offered sacri- 
fices and burnt incense in the holy house to the 
Most High. They observed the feasts, the fasts, the 
sabbath, and all those injunctions except the moral 
laws, such as thou shalt not steal, nor defraud thy 
neighbor, nor rob him.;*^® thou shalt not commit 
adultery;*®' he that killeth any man shall surely be 
put to death ;*'^ if thy brother be waxen poor, and 
fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him, 
yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner, that he 
may live with thee.*** But as a large part of the 
Jewish nation had, from the lowest citizen to the 
highest functionary, already become robbers, assas- 
sinations were cheap and plunder common, *^^ 

As years added to the age of the hierarchy, and 
gave weight and reverence to the forms of worship, 
the people were being converted from a partial moral 
condition into one of professional criminality. * ^"^ They 
threw off all restraints, and all claims even to apparent 
respectability 



158 JosEPHus' Antiquittes OF THE jBws, book 20, ch. 8, aec. 8. 
r59 L^Yincug, ch. 19, verses 11-13. 

160 Ibid,, ch. 20, verse 10. 

161 Ibid., ch. 24, verse 17. 
ID2 Ibid., ch. B5, verse 35. 

163 See Antiquities of tblej Jews, book 20, ch. 6, sec. 10, where Josephus 
says that Judea was eo afflicted by robbers that they were enabled to subdue 
whole cities. 

164 Ibid. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 327 

For fifteen centuries the Hebrews had been pro- 
gressing, and with them as with us in America, as 
they were successful in the accumulation of riches, 
surrounding themselves with the real and the imagin- 
ary comforts of life, they rejected all ideas of a moral 
retrogression.'" Those who held different opinions 
were murmurers, croakers and foreboders of evil, who 
envied the prosperity of others The whole world 
was growing intellectually greater and morally better. 
In reality, as their whole history shows, from the 
time of their first establishment in Canaan to the 
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian, they 
gradually grew worse and worse in morals; they 
progressed in religion and criminality, but not in 
virtue. * ^ ^ Concurrent with the accumulations of the 
miser, or of the debauchee, there is proportional 
satisfaction at the condition of the world. The latter 
can enjoy his animal appetite to its full, and the 
former be lost in the worship of the means. The 
learned, the professional, the rich, defrauded the 
poor and the ignorant; they robbed and oUt-robbed 
the robbers.^®' But we find that all classes, even the 

i6s Matthew, ch. 23. 

i66 See Matthew, ch. 23, verses 2G-83, where Christ denounces them as 
being possessed and actuated by the utmost wickedness. 

167 See the CEise wherein Doras, a "faithful friend" of Jonatnan, the 
high priest, was employed by Felix "to bring the robbers upon Jonathan, 
In order to kill him; and this he did by promising to give him a great deal 
of money for bo doing. Doras complied with the proposal, and oontrived 



328 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

robbers themselves, went iip to the temple to worship 
God, and zealously regarded all ceremonials of the 
spiritual laws, although they paid no attention to 
the moral commandments. * ^ * Such was the religious 
and moral condition of the Jews at the breaking out 
of hostilities between them and the Komans in the 
twelfth year of the reign of JSTero. 

Their evil passions were the immediate cause of 
the war, as these were afterward, during the siege of 
the holy city, the productive agencies of their own 
immolation.*^" Whoever will take the trouble to 
closely study the condition of the Jewish mind, from 
the founding of the theocracy to the conflagration of 
the holy house, will not fail to discover the two 
diverse directions in which their moral and religious 
faculties must have progressed. Mankind are either 
controlled and directed by the moral or by the 
animal ; they are agents of the one or of the other, 
and hence it becomes the intelligence of mankind to 
elect by which the world shall be governed. Shall 

matters so that the. robbers might murder him, after the following manner : 
Certain of those robbers went up to the city as if they were going to worship 
God, while they had daggers under their garments, and thus mingling them- 
selves among the multitude, they- slew Jonathan." — ^Josephus' Antiquities 
OP THE Jews, book 20, ch. 8, sec. 5. 

i68 Ibis, passim al'ter ch. 8. 

i6g See Josephus' preface to The History of the Destruction of 
JerusaLlEM, sec. 4, where he says: "Accordingly it appears to me that the 
misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared 
to these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were ; while the authors 
of them were not foreigners neither." 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 329 

vice and crime be the ruling elements in the future, 
as they have been in the past? These can only be 
determined by a contemplation of their conduct. The 
Jews had progressed, religiously, into a condition of 
piety, and were become bigots in their beliefs ; yet 
they had not advanced in the feelings of justice and 
compassion, but had, on the contrary, degenerated 
into the wretched status of the pirate, had fallen 
wholly under the influence of the animal faculties 
of the mind. Yet they were firmly convinced that 
they held a better moral relation to mankind than 
did their forefathers. In the advancement of these 
ideas of progression, they told the Saviour of the world 
that had they lived in the earlier ages of the church 
they "would not have been partakers in the blood 
of the prophets."^''" 

They closely adhered to the traditions of the 
church, but zealously imitated the vicious conduct 
of mankind in the past. These were the only two 
advances they had made, for in the arts, in architec- 
ture, and generally in all those things which are the 
results of the intellectual faculties of mankind, they 
had fallen behind their progenitors ; they exalted the 
wisdom of their ancestors, and in comparison felt a 



170 Consult Matthew, ch. 23, verses 30-31, where Christ answered this 
conceit of theirs, and in His peculiar language pronounced them as culpable 
as those who slew the prophets. 



3S0 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

disparagement of their own. "^ The Jewish temple 
was built more than six hundred years before the 
final dispersion of the Jews. It was a work of mas- 
terly art, and although not as magnificent as king 
Solomon's, which was destroyed by Babylon, yet had 
long been the admiration of the world. Its workman- 
ship exceeded anything constructed in posterior ages. 

But even knowledge, of whatever kind it may be, 
is a curse to mankind if it tend not to elevate man 
morally and socially. The intellectual powers, from 
which much knowledge and learning arise, are subject- 
ive agents of the affective faculties of the mind. It 
matters not, however, whether the Hebrews advanced 
in knowledge or not, it is evident that they did not 
in wisdom. But that they advanced in their spiritual 
condition, and also that they at the same time degen- 
erated from a moral one, is beyond question. 

We shall now introduce a few of those facts which 
relate to the moral and religious condition of the Jews 
just before their dispersion and during the siege of 
Jerusalem. We have traced the decline of their moral 
powers from Abraham to the conquest of the two tribes 
by the Babylonians, and from the period just before 
the commencement of their war against the Romans 
to the breaking out of hostilities. We have already 
shown that after their restoration by Cyrus they no 

171 Matthew, ch. 24; Mark, ch. 13, and Luke, ch. 21. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 331 

more rebelled against the religion of their ancestors, 
but increased their devotions to the outer and inner 
forms of spiritual worship. By the side of this 
steady growth of their religious principles we find a 
constant and continued disappearance of all moral 
elements from the nation. A final summing up of 
the facts of their condition in these two particulars 
will end our reflections upon their history. 

Perhaps there is no better method by which to 
discover the moral qualities of a people than to 
wholly emancipate them from all penal laws; that 
when this is done, the true character of the nation 
will appear fully to the satisfaction of the most stupid 
incredulity. It would, to say the least, be a danger- 
ous experiment, and, although no one can conceive it 
without a decided disapproval, it has been often 
carried into practical effect in both ancient and mod- 
ern times. The venality of the judiciary and of the 
executive has ever been a source of complaint in the 
past, and will ever continue to be in the future. It 
is principally from these two stations that civil wars 
are evolved, although the latter are not the direct and 
immediate consequences of the former. For it is evi- 
dent to the most superficial that, were the people just, 
the power to do evil would have no being in these 
functionaries of government. And if the people should 
become such, the corruption of official persons would 



332 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

disappear. Whenever venality has become practical 
with officers of state, it has also with the people. 
There is a market for it, and its quantity is in pro- 
portion to the demoralized condition of the masses. 
Therefore whoever affirms that his country has been 
ruined by governors of venal motives, directly charges 
his own people with depravity. It is also evident 
that mankind do not become corrupt all at once, but 
that it is by a long and constant operation of the 
natural laws that moral principles are made to dis- 
appear. And when it is made known to our under- 
standing that litigants and competitors, at any former 
period, owed their success not to the merits of their 
cause, but to the unwarrantable partiality of func- 
tionaries, we are driven, by force of reason, to the 
conclusion that venality existed in both before they 
came in contact. 

This was the condition of affairs in Judea when the 
relation of peace was broken off between it and Rome. 
For several centuries before the procuratorships of 
Albinus and Gessius Florus, an inordinate thirst for 
gold had become one of the chief ruling passions in 
the majority of the nation. The respectable classes in 
former ages, who had disdained to violate the civil laws 
of the land, and openly obtain their desires by plunder 
of the unwary, now took an indirect, but not the less 
systematic and disreputable, course to accomplish 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 333 

the same end. In the elections or appointments to 
the civil and ecclesiastical governments, this passion 
placed the higher classes in bonded obligations to 
success, and no means, however nnscrupulons, was 
omitted which was designed, by its nature, to warrant 
a favorable issue. The same corrupt system was the 
measure of individual prosperity in the trades and in 
the professions, and as this soon became common to 
the majority as an external assistant to the amassment 
of wealth, the symptoms of moral decay came to 
the knowledge of all as an example for imitation. 
Although these external acts were lightly considered 
by the people, they had a direct and dangerous effect 
on their inner nature. While they thus satiated their 
ambition, they expunged their manhood. Moral prin- 
ciples were no longer known except in a few individual 
instances, the baser passions becoming the predom- 
inant and ruling elements of the respectable. 

While this system of demoralization was in pro- 
gress with the higher ranks, the lower, influenced by 
the vicious conduct of the prosperous, took a bolder, 
but no more dangerous, attitude to the existence of the 
state. They abandoned all pretensions to honesty, 
organizing themselves into companies for pillage and 
plunder upon the public. In no considerable time the 
bands of outlaws had so increased their numbers as to 
become potent, and very influential upon officers of 



334 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

state and chnrch.. In the meantime they condncted 
their enterprises against their own people. They 
became a dangerous power in the land to the just, 
and more especially to those who divided the spoils 
of the nation among themselves for pretended official 
services to the state. The remaining portion of the 
masses, not lost to virtue, were the victims of both. 
The dishonest peculations of the functionaries of the 
kingdom, of the hierarchy, on the one hand, and of 
the robbers on the other, became a crushing weight to 
the poor, and as the sustenance of the nation depended 
upon the labor of the last, their earnings were severely 
reduced. Life became burdensome, its support diffi- 
cult, changing the feelings into bitterness and disgust. 
When such had become the mental condition of the 
poor, there was a rapid accession to the ranks, and 
multiplication of the power, of the robbers. 

Such was the ambition of the Jews, and of their 
country, when Albinus and Gessius Florus were 
appointed by the Roman government as procurators 
of the Hebrews. Certain writers of the Jewish war 
would desire us to believe that these governors were 
the immediate cause of hostilities, when it is well 
known that they could have accomplished but a little 
more than nothing, had they not been supported by 
a large portion, if not by the majority, of the ruled. 
All the time of Albinus' appointment, the land was 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 335 

overrun by gangs of highwaymen. ^ "^ ^ Although the 
governor was secretly in league with them, released 
them from prisons and granted them indulgence to 
commit plunder, yet the principal citizens had previ- 
ously either organized bad men into gangs, or had 
coalesced with others already formed, and carried on 
their peculiar vocation in the large city. ^ ' ' Perhaps 
no country in the whole world could, at any period of 
its. history, present such an example of moral degen- 
eration. Nearly a moiety of the people were either 
secretly or openly engaged in the commission of crime. 
The calling of the outlaw had been so long treated 
with lenity by the government, and countenanced by 
the masses, that it had grown into power and respect- 
ability. Their operations in the capital indicated 
their number and their power, as they were able to 
silence and put in fear all persons peaceably predis- 
posed. Although the masses were robbed, none dare 
utter a murmur against the act. *'^* 



172 JosEPHUs' Wars of the Jews, book 2, ch. 14, sec. 1. 

173 Ibid. 

174 As to the extent of their power over the people, and the fear which 
the latter stood in, may be gathered from the following passage of Josephus : 
"At this time it was, that the enterprises of the seditious at Jerusalem were 
very formidable : the principal men among them purchasing leave of Albinus 
to go on with their seditious practices; while that part of the people who 
delighted in disturbances, joined themselves to such as had fellowship with 
Albinus : and every one of those wicked wretches was compassed with his 
own band of robbers, while himself, like an arch-robber, or a tyrant, made a 
figure among his company, and abused his authority over those about him, 
in order to plunder those that lived quietly. The effect of which was this. 



336 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

But the Jews, instead of being corrupted by the 
Roman governors, were the corrupters of them ; they 
subordinated the agents of Rome to the advancements 
of their own pecuniary ends. Those among the 
Jews who had wealth purchased the influence, or 
the silence, of the latter to the robberies which the 
former had committed. Nor can this act, so far as 
we are informed, be chargeable to the lower classes 
of the inhabitants, for it and many more of a similar 
nature were the acts of the prelates of the church. 
Ananus, the high priest during the administration 
of Albinus, had surrounded himself with a gang oi 
Jews who went out of the city and committed rob- 
beries upon the agriculturists, returning the plunder 
to their leader. 

But when it became known at the seat of empire 
that Albinus had been influenced by money to tolerate 
the barbarous acts of the clergy and wealthy civilians, 
he was removed by the imperial government, and 
another appointed to fill his position. During his 
administration robberies had been the most numerous 
and frequent that had ever been known in Judea. 



that those who lost their goods wore forced to hold their peace when they 
had reason to show great indignation at what they had suffered; but those 
who escaped were forced to flatter him that deserved to be punished, out 
of the fear they were in of suffering equally with the others. Upon the whole, 
nobody durst speak their mind, for tyranny was generally tolerated and 
at this time were those seeds aown which brought the city to destruction." — 
JOBEPHUS' Wabs of THE JEWS, book 2, ch. 14, sec. 1. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 337 

He both tolerated them and destroyed their enter- 
prises ; but none met with disfavor who were willing 
to contribute to his private purse. It is evident, from 
his acts, that he intended to license all who were 
willing to divide the spoils with him ; those who did 
not were antagonistic to his interests, and those only 
did he punish. Although he was accessible to bribery 
and joined himself to the interest of some of the out- 
law gangs, he was no worse than the high priest, 
Jesus, for Albinus and Jesus were bought to favor 
the schemes of that gang of robbers which was 
headed by another high priest, Ananus, at one and 
the same time. In these cases money was more 
potent than the feelings of religion and equity. * "^ ' 

But when Gessius Floras succeeded Albinus, we 
find an entire change in the appearance of the higher 
class of the Jews. Floras emancipated the people 
from all penal laws by encouraging them in the com- 
mission of crimes. Then it was that the higher 
classes, in both state and church, threw oflF all reserve, 
and plied their vocation with the public avowal of 
their object.^'" And the higher we ascend in the 
different classes of this people, from the poorest 
peasant to the most illustrious prelate and prince, 
we meet with corruption in proportion to our advance. 

175 JoSEPHtrs' Antiquties of the Jews, book 20, ch. 9, sec. 2. 

176 Ibid., ch. 11, sec. 1. 

22 



338 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

The Jews dreaded their own governors ; they preferred 
those of Roman extraction, because the latter were 
less odious and cruel. At the death of the Jewish 
king, Herod, sixty-nine years before Vespasian invaded 
Judea with the Roman armies, the people opposed 
the succession of his son, Archelaus. The reason 3 
which they had for opposing Archelaus, was the 
tyrannical and cruel nature of the man.^"^^ He had 
slaughtered three thousand of the people that had 
gone up to worship, while he and they were offering 
sacrifices. ^^^ The Hebrews considered the Romans 
to be barbarians, without religion, and doomed to be 
lost at the day of judgment, yet they acknowledged 
the greater humanity of their foreign governors. But 
Archelaus was not the only governor of the Jews who 
directed his official power to the murder of his own 
people, for at the breaking out of hostilities, the 
toparch, Simon, ravaged, robbed and murdered all 
the wealthy of his own nation in Idumea for their 
money and other valuables.*'^'' This he did while all 



177 "And indeed the purport of his' [Antipas] "discourse was to aggravate 
Archelaus' crime in slaying such a multitude about the temple, which multi- 
tude came to the festival, but were barbarously slain in the midst of their own 
sacrifices, and he said there was such a vast number ot dead bodies heaped 
together in the temple as oven a foreign war should that come upon them 
before it was announced, could not have heaped together.' "— Josbphus' 
Wars of the Jews, book 3, ch 2, sec. 5. 

178 Ibid., ch. 1, sec. 3. 

179 See the horrid acts of this villain drawn by Josephus, in Wars of 
THE Jews, book 3, ch. 33, sec. 2. 



GENERAL INTRODU0TIO]vr. ^39 

the cities of the Jews were being fortified for defense 
against the advance of the Roman arms. A fine exhi- 
bition of patriotism, of compassion and of justice, 
that, when the whole people of the country were in 
excitement and endeavoring to prepare themselves for 
defense against a nation that comprehended within its 
grasp the entire civilized earth, one of its generals with 
his army murders thousands for mere money, and 
afterward by blows brutally disfigures the bodies of 
the dead. The more discerning of the nation foresaw 
that the calamities which were being committed by 
their own generals, upon themselves, were worse than 
any that would be perpetrated by any foreign power. 
They desired in all instances at this time to be deliv- 
ered from their own people. But it was a small portion 
of the Hebrews, for, by the paucity of their numbers, 
in comparison to the whole body of the nation, they 
were enabled to make very little opposition to that 
mad energy which controlled the seditious and urged 
them on to their own complete national extinction. 

To convince one that the selfish and the animal 
faculties of the mind of this people were in uncondi- 
tional supremacy over the moral, it requires but an 
indifierent scrutiny of the character of the conduct in 
the majority. All this majority, who were possessed 
either of great physical strength, or of sufficient riches 
to exercise influence over the lower classes, abandoned 



340 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the cause of their country, of their people, of all but 
the gratification of their own brutal natures and spir- 
itual feelings in the religion of their ancestors. The 
degree to which the last two were carried is, indeed, 
almost as marvelous as miracles at which skeptics 
have been disposed to scout since the introduction of 
primitive Christianity into Rome. They were directly 
engaged either in their own devotion to despotic posi- 
tions over the nation, or the accumulation of great 
riches by the plunder of the people. • Judas, Simon, 
Athrongeus, and a great many others put crowns on 
their own heads, setting themselves up as kings of 
the Hebrews. ^ ^ • 



i8o "At this time there were great disturbances in. the country, and that 
in many places ; and the opportunity that now offered itself induced a great 
many to set up for king. ♦ * ♦ In Seporis, also, a city of Galilee, there was 
one Judas, (the son of the arch-robber Hezekias,) who formerly overran the 
country, and had been subdued by king Herod ; this man got no small multi- 
tude together, and broke open the place where the royal armor was laid up, 
and armed those about him, and attacked those that were so earnest to gain 
the dominion. * * ♦ In Perea also, Simon, one of the servants of the king, 
relying upon the handsome appearance and tallness of his person, put a diadem 
upon his own head also; he also went about with a company of robbers that 
he had got together, and burnt down the royal palace that was at Jericho, and 
many other costly edifices besides, and procured himself very easily spoils, by 
rapine, as snatching them out of the fire. * * ♦ At this time it was that a 
certain shepherd ventured to set himself up for king; he was called Athron- 
geus. It was his strength of body that made him expect such a dignity, as 
trell as his soul, which despised death; and besides these qualifications, he 
had four brethren like himself. He put a troop of armed men under each of 
these his brethren, and made use of them as his generals and commanders 
when he made his incursions, while he did himself act like a king, and med- 
dled only with the more important affairs ; and at this time he put a diadem 
about his head, and continued after that to overrun the country for no little 
time with his brethren, and became their leader in killing both the Romans 
and those of the king's party ; nor did any Jew escape him, if any gain could ^ 
accrue to him thereby."— JO3EPH0S' Waks of the Jews, book 2, ch. 4. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 341 

What really was the number that attempted, dur- 
ing the distresses of the nation, to gain control of the 
masses and establish themselves in tyrannical author- 
ity, never can be known with any certainty, but, 
according to a credible historian, they were in all 
probability very great. 

Yet these were literally nothing in comparison to 
that portion which were concealed in another direction, 
under those influences emanating from one and the 
same source of the inner nature of their minds. At 
the time a part had crowned themselves and were 
making war upon the Jews as well as against the 
arms of Rome, a greater number had become allied 
to the freebooters, and pursued a course of unre- 
strained crime. The latter attacked the innocent at 
night in their dwellings, murdered them, robbed them 
and burned their dwellings to the ground. They 
attacked those of the Roman legions who had strayed 
too far from camp to receive protection, murdered them 
and plundered their dead bodies of all effects. The 
defenseless condition of the Jewish army organized 
for the protection of the state met the same atrocious 
treatment. This class, at the breaking out of hostili- 
ties, was by far the most numerous of any calling in 
the nation, and amounting almost to a moiety of the 
adult male inhabitants, was in a state of unrestrained 
piracy, attacking, without regard to nationality or 



342 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

condition, all mankind within Jndea. * ^ * Being more 
powerful than the authorities of the law, they congre- 
gated in the city of Jerusalem, there not only robbing 
the most respectable people, but murdering them 
upon the pretense of treason to the Jews. The first 
officers of government whom they dispatched were 
Antipas, Levias and Raguel, all of royal descent. ^^^ 
They then began to place their own agents in positions 
over the people in state and church. This resulted in 
conflicts between the people and those who were termed 
robbers. But the people were led against the outlaws 
by Ananus, whose own character seems to have been, 
several years prior to this time, very similar to that 
of those whom he now denounced as robbers and 
villains. ^^^ We have seen that by his gifts, he had 
bribed Albinus, the procurator, and Jesus, the high 
priest. ^ ' " He it was who while high priest, condemned 
James, the brother of Christ, to be stoned contrary to 
law. ^ ^ ^ 

i8i Josephus, ia speaking of the moral condition of the masses at this 
time, observes, that " in the first place, all the people in every place betook 
themselves to rapine; after which they got together in bodies, !n order to rob 
the people of the country," [the Jewish agriculturists,] "insomuch that for 
barbarity and iniquity those of the same nation did no way differ from the 
Romans; nay, it seemed to be a much lighter thing to be ruined by Romans 
than by themselves." — "Waks of the Jews, book 4, ch. 3, sec. 2. 

182 Ibid., sees. 4 and 5. 

183 Compare Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, book 20, ch. 9, sees. 
1 and 2, with his Wars of the Jews, book 4, ch. 3, sees. 9 and 10. 

184 Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, book 20, ch. 9, sec. 3. 

185 Ibid., sec. 7. 



GENERAL INTKODUOTlOlvr. 343 

He had accumnlated great riches during his pontifi- 
cate by robbery of the people, some of whom, from 
want, in consequence of his act, starved to death. ^^^ 
But the other high priests of his time did so likewise 
before the breaking out of hostilities, and thus when 
the poorer classes of the people saw that of whatever 
they were the lawful owners, was taken by the prelates 
of the church through their greed of gain, they came to 
regard the offices of both state and church as positions 
from which the fortunate enriched themselves by fraud 
and oppression practiced upon the masses. And thus 
in those first conflicts in the city, the character of one 
party was but little better than that of the other. Both 
parties, the one by practice, the other by retrospec- 
tion, looked upon the higher ecclesiastical trusts as 
desirable ends, possessing two distinct objects, and 
comprehending within their range all there were in 
time and eternity, inordinate riches below and ever- 
lasting happiness above. The opinions which each 
of the belligerent forces, in Jerusalem, had of the 
other, were verified by the conduct of both prior to, 
as well as at, the time of the civil war. Ananus and 
Jesus, high priests, ^.nd their leading followers, had 
maintained, as they thought, sufficient modesty to 
dissemble their purposes of life, that their real objects 
were partially concealed under the appearance of their 

JOPEPHTJS' Antiquities of the Jews, book 20, ch. 9, sec. 3. 



844 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

sanctity. To the characteristics of the robber and the 
murderer, they added that of hypocrisy. But that 
vulgar party, which were now endeavoring to seize 
upon the pontifical benefices, cannot be charged with 
this last element of depravity. The zealots, robbers, 
were under the command of those whose ancestral 
origin were as illustrious for piety, as that of Ananus, 
or of Jesus. ^'^ 

But when the superior power of the high priests 
was about to eject the zealots from the temple, which 
the latter had appropriated to their own uses as a 
fortress and as a place of worship, the lying cunning 
of their leaders outwitted the chiefs of the people, 
Eleazar and Zacharias, through representations, which, 
although apparently false, yet were supported by 
something approaching to truth. Nor were the Idu- 
means slow to be convinced that the high priests and 
the principal citizens were about to treacherously 
surrender the city to the disciplined armies of the 
Romans. It had been known that the prelates were 
opposed to the war, and, although peace was prefer- 
able to a contest of arms with the world, yet the 
majority of the nation, in a case of hostilities, had a 
right to be heard on a question touching their national 
independence. But when the twenty thousand armed 



187 See reply of Simon to the high priest, Josbphus' Wars of the JKVfBt 
book 4, ch. 4, .sec. 4. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 346 

Idumeans ^^Jews) had gotten inside of the city, the 
true character of the nation gave a full exhibition of 
itself. The shocking cruelties which were then com- 
mitted, would freeze the spirit of an Indian thug. 

And although the Idumeans had, as long as any 
other tribe of the Hebrews, been thoroughly educated 
in all matters pertaining to their spiritual natures, 
they were, even in times of peace, with great difficulty 
restrained from the commission of murder. The 
slaughters of which they were guilty, at Jemsalem, 
extended to the innocent and to the corrupt, to infancy 
and to old age, to those who were suffering from 
disease and to those who were in the full strength of 
manhood and thus able to oppose them in arms. The 
nature of the conflict, the dead bodies in the houses 
and thoroughfares of the city, fully indicated the 
character of the Idumeans and of the zealots The 
entrance of the former into the city had been effected 
in the night, which, when it became known to the 
inhabitants, created great consternation among them. 
The bloody brutality of this tribe was known through- 
out Israel to exceed that of the robbers themselves. 
The slightest offense, were it but a mere act of self 
protection, was a capital crime in the eyes of the 
Idumeans, and the person exercising it worthy of 
death without right of burial. 

They took no prisoners, granted no mercy, and, as 



346 HiSTOEY OF Tnii: declension. 

they "spared neither age, sex, nor condition," their only 
concern apparently was the amount of killing they 
would be enabled to accomplish in the shortest period 
of time. "They are naturally a most barbarous and 
bloody nation " ; i ^ s u they were murderers. " ^ ^ ** These 
are the descriptive heads under which they were classed 
by their most truthful and illustrious historian. But 
what need has one to rely upon the generalized char- 
acteristics Josephus has given of this nation when he 
records their acts ? From these none can come to any 
other determination. Of the aristocratic portion of 
the inhabitants in the city, they murdered twelve 
thousand. If we are allowed to estimate the relative 
proportion of rich to poor, the slaughters of the latter 
were at least five times that of the former. This was 
caused by the predisposition of the Idumeans and of the 
zealots for the shedding of human blood, and not in 
consequence of the refusal of Ananus and Jesus to per- 
mit them to enter the city during a storm. It could 
not be expected by them that they would be welcomed 
by that class which they had come armed to oppose. 
This is a weak and untenable position which Josephus 
assumed without being at all warranted by the nature 
of the facts. But if one suppose, as the same author 
relates, that they were first incited to take up arms 



i88 JosEpnus' Wau of the Jews, book 1, ch. 5, sec. 1. 

iSg Ilill). 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION". 347 

against the authorities of the city through the belief 
that the latter were about to betray the cause of the 
people to the Romans, he cannot arrogate to this their 
mad inclination to slaughter those in whom no such 
disposition was discovered. If Ananus and Jesus had 
taken precautionary measures of self defense, in which 
they were by all known principles justified, the aged, 
the infirm, the women and children had not. If the 
high priests, in contemplation of the unrestrained 
disposition of their people to cruelty and plunder, 
had favored the occupation of the country, or even 
the holy city, by the army of the Romans, there 
were those who knew nothing of these intentions, if 
they did their opinions could have added no weight 
whatever to the affair. 

As the people, a miscellaneous assemblage, from 
private dwellings, of all ages and sexes, collected to 
ascertain the cause of excitement, when the Idumeans 
effected an entrance into the city, they were pressed 
upon and slaughtered in heaps, while women and 
children implored them for mercy. After such a 
portion of the people had been cut off as gave the 
government of the city into the power of the zealots, 
the Idumeans quitted it, returning to their own land, 
where they soon underwent the same fate which 
they had visited upon the defenseless of Jerusalem. 
Another band of robbers, under the command of 



348 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION". 

Simon, numbering not far from sixty five thousand, 
by their slaughters and conflagrations, left Idumea 
depopulated and a smoking desert.*^" So that one 
entire nation of outlaws perished at the hands of 
another as devoted to murder and plunder as itself. 
Masada was likewise under the control of the same 
class of the Jewish nation. Throughout the entire 
country surrounding this city, they murdered those 
who did not make their escape, and then plundered 
their residences. ' ^ ' They slew at the small city of 
Engaddi, while the men of the place were absent at 
the feast of unleavened bread, "above seven hun- 
dred women and children."*^* The whole country 
surrounding Masada was left by them in complete 
desolation. ' ^ ^ Every village in the vicinity was pil- 
laged by robbers. The marauding armies that were 
marching through the country were so powerful that 
fortified cities were in danger of being taken and 
sacked by them. The city of Gadara wa^ a tempting 
prize to the avaricious tendencies of the marauding 
Jews, and its wealthy citizens, knowins: that their 
property was the price of their lives, were forced to 
surrender the city into the hands of the Romans to 
preserve both. They, however, were not in danger 



190 JosEPHUS' "Waks of ihb Jkws, book i, ch. 9, sees. 5, 3 and 1. 

191 Ibid., ch. 7, sec. Z. 
193 Ibid. 

193 Ibid. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 349 

from bands without the city, but were about to be 
overpowered and butchered by the same but hypo- 
critical elements from within. \®* The fear which the 
inhabitants of this city had of falling into the hands 
of their own nationality, amounted almost to a feeling 
of terror, and although not remarkable considering 
the circumstances, disappeared at the entrance of the 
Romans: they welcomed them with joy. *^^ Through- 
out the whole war, the unarmed feared nothing more 
than the savage nature of their own people. Their 
only refuge, for life and property, was in the protec- 
tion of their political foes. 

At the breaking out of hostilities, as we have already 
observed, about one-half of the entire population were, 
directly or indirectly, committed to the crimes of rob- 
bery and of murder. But after the war had progressed 
a year or more there was a change, not in the proclivi- 
ties but in the conduct of the masses, not less than 
three-fourths of the nation being engaged in these pur- 
suits. Their acts were external exhibitions of innate 
mental conditions which had long existed; moral 
hypocrisy and dissimulation were suppressed, and the 
crimes of which the people were guilty were but the 
natural language of their evil dispositions. The whole 
tribe of the Idumeans, with scarcely an exception. 



194 JosKPHUs' Wabs of thh Jkws, book 4, ch. 7, sec. 8. 
19s Ibid. 



350 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

were devoted fully to the slaughter and plunder of 
others. They were a powerful tribe, yet there were 
those of purer descent,. of not less piety, but of more 
bloodthirsty tendencies, who extinguished them by the 
sword, appropriating their effects. G-reed and cru- 
elty were the characteristics which governed the whole 
Hebrew people at this period of their history. These 
two feelings, consequences of their corresponding prim- 
itive causes when perverted and unopposed by the 
subordinate condition to which the moral had fallen, 
produced a correlative determination of the Jewish 
mind to those states of active criminality by which the 
nation was finally expunged. A greed for gold, and 
an innate love of inflicting death upon whatever is 
possessed of life, as horrible as it may appear, were 
the perverted feelings to which the major part of the 
nation had, at length, become enslaved. Before the 
war was two-thirds concluded, every city in the 
whole land of the Jews, not in the immediate pos- 
session of the Romans, was held and controlled by 
Jewish robbers, *^° who slaughtered its people for 
the double purpose of plunder, and to enjoy the 
pleasures of witnessing the dying agonies of their 
victims. * " ' 



X96 JosEPHUs' Wars op the Jews, book 3, 4 and 5. 

197 The Jews had mostly become robbers, and of them Josephus says: 
"They agreed in nothing but this, to kill those that were innocent."— Ibid. 
book 5, ch. 1, sec. 5. 



GENERAL IISrTBODUCTION-. 351 

After the piratical portion had robbed and mur- 
dered the country people and desolated nearly the 
whole land, they were finally driven by the legions 
to the holy city, where they continued that calling to 
which, by the perversion of their mental powers, they 
had long been predisposed. Before the arrival of the 
legions at the walls of the city, the revolting crimes of 
the Jews in it fully justified the idea of searching for 
gross brutality, not in the animal creation, but in man 
himself. Their career was one of pure cruelty, without 
the excuse of those triflingly mitigating circumstances 
which usually attend the merciless life of the corsair. 
The nature of their phrenic condition was destructive 
of all else, and death followed th<iir movements. The 
armed and the unarmed alike fell benea.th the blows 
of the same blade. Death was the doom of the con- 
queror and the conquered. From death, in Jerusalem, 
none could escape, and the living envied the silent and 
happy state of the dead. 

But it appeared to make no difference what part or 
class of the nation had the power in numbers, or was 
clothed with the civil administration backed by the 
militia of the realm, as the same lamentable acts were 
sure to result, the one and same characteristics exist- 
ing in all sexes, ranks and professions. For ages 
external phenomena had dealt, with an unsparing 
hand, fatal blows to the primitive moral powers. 



352 HISTOKY Oi^ THE DECLENSION. 

The day of judgment, under the natural laws, with 
this people had arrived; the last penalty to which 
they were liable could no longer be deferred; they 
were to be extinguished by those very faculties which 
they had called into active predominance. " ^ ^ 

Having shown what were the moral qualities of the 
Jewish nation down to the time of its dispersion, we 
have only a few facts of a religious nature to add by 
way of contrast to the civil life of its people. We 
shall see by the following array of facts, in addition 
to those already given of the same kind, that the 
religious feelings of this people were in full life, 
strength and activity; that their veneration for the 
religion of their ancestors had suffered no diminu- 
tion, and that they worshiped, as devotedly as any 



198 Josephus himself says, "that it was a seditious temper of our own 
that destroyed it, and that they were the tyrants among the Jews who brought 
the Koman power upon us, who unwillingly attacked us, and occasioned the 
destruction of our holy temple. Titus Caesar, who destroyed it, is himself a 
witness who, during the entire war, pitied the people, who were kept under 
by the seditious, and did often delay the taking of the city, and allow time to 
the siege, in order to let the authors have opportunity for repentance. But if 
any one makes an unjust accusation against us, when we speak so passionately 
about the tyrants, or the robbers, or sorely bewail the misfortunes of our 
country, let him indulge my affections herein, though it be contrary to the 
rules of writing history ; because it had so come to pass, that our city of Jeru- 
salem had arrived at a higher degree of felicity than any other city under 
the Roman government, and yet at last fell into the sorest calamities again. 
Accordingly, it appears to me, that the misfortunes of all, from the beginning 
of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews, are not so considerable 
as they were ; while the authors of them were not foreigners neither. This 
makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations. But if any one be 
Inlloxiblo in his censures of me, let him attribute the facts themselves to the 
historical part, and the lamentations to the writer himself only."— Preface, 
sec. 4» to tho History ov the Destruction of JerusaiiEM. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 363 

race can worship, the Supreme Being with all the 
enthusiasm that is possible under the primitive relig- 
ious faculties of the mind. And also while they were 
the worst depraved, they were the most religious and 
superstitious inhabitants of western Asia or of eastern 
Europe. 

All classes, high and low, had regularly attended 
upon divine service for several centuries before the 
expunction of the nation. They were very easily 
and seriously affected by those signs which were 
termed evil, or those omens that they supposed por- 
tended good or ill consequences to the individual or 
to the nation. Like the inhabitants of Europe in the 
the middle ages, their fears were greatly influenced 
by many of the acoidences of life. It foretold misfor- 
tune to the person to have discovered the new moon 
over the left shoulder, to have turned back after 
departure, and more ridiculous still, to have passed 
a gray horse without pulling a hair out of his tail. 
The most educated minds of the Jews, such as Jose- 
phus', were alternately in subordination to the religious 
and to the animal faculties. The former is made known 
to us by the great confidence which Josephus placed 
in a dream, relating to the fall of Jotapata, his own 
capture by the Romans, and the elevation of the 
Vespasians to universal empire. He believed it was 
literally fulfilled that he was saved alive by the wisdom 

23 



354 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of God, to predict future events to certain eminent 
persons of Rome."" But the whole people of the 
Jews were easily imposed upon by the prediction of 
false prophets. During the siege of the city of Jerusa- 
lem, toward its close, when the besieged could offer no 
further successful resistance to the legions, the peojjle 
got upon the holy house with the firm belief that, as 
they had been told, they should there witness, by a 
providential act, their own salvation and the destruc- 
tion of the Romans.^""' 

As the facts belonging to the last days of the nation 
are narrated by one, in a manner which is at once 
reverential and superstitious; as they were indorsed 
by him whose mind was, perhaps, the least burdened 
by the superstition of his age, we have concluded to 
allow him to testify, in his own peculiar way, to the spir- 
itual condition of himself and of his own nationality. 
In connection with the last fact given in the preceding 
paragraph, Josephus says: "Thus were this misera- 
ble people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as 
belied God himself; while they did not attend nor give 
credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so 
plainly foretell their future desolation, but like men 
infatuated, without either eyes to see or minds *to con- 
sider, did not regard the denunciation that God made 

199 Josephus' Wabs of the Jews, book 3, ch. 8, boo. 9. 

200 Ibid., book 6, ch. 5, sec. 2. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 365 

to them. Thus there was a star resembling a sword, 
which stood over the city, and a comet that continned 
a whole year. Thns also befoje the Jews' rebellion, 
and before the commotions which preceded the war, 
when the people were come in great crowds to the feast 
of unleavened bread, on the eighth Xanthicus, and 
at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone 
around the altar of the holy house, that it appeared 
to be bright day-time ; which light lasted for half an 
hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the 
unskillful, but was interpreted by the sacred scribes 
to portend those events that followed immediately 
upon it. At the same festival also a heifer, as she was 
led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a 
lamb in the midst of the temple. Moreover, the eastern 
gate of the inner temple, which was brass, and vastly 
heavy, and had been with great difficulty shut by 
twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, 
and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, 
which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to 
be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of 
the night. Now those that kept watch in the temple 
came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, 
and told him of it, who then came up hither, and not 
without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. 
But the men of learning understood it, that the secu- 
rity of the holy house was dissolved of its own accord, 



356 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

and the gate was opened for the advantage of its 
enemies. So these publicly declared, that the signal 
foreshadowed the desolation that was coming upon 
them. Besides these, a few days after the feast, on 
the one-and-twentieth day of the month Artemisius, a 
certain prodigious and incredible phenomena appeared. 
I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, 
were It not related by those who saw it, and were not the 
events that followed of so considerable a nature as to 
deserve such signals; for before sun-setting, chariots 
and troops of soldiers in their armor, were seen run- 
ning about among the clouds, and surrounding of 
cities. Moreover, at the feast which we call Pentecost, 
as the priests were going by night into the inner court 
of the temple, as the custom was, to perform their 
sacred ministrations, they said, that in the first place 
they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after 
that heard a sound of a great multitude, saying ' Let 
us remove hence.' But what is still more terrible, 
there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and 
a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, 
and at a time when the city was in very great peace 
and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our 
custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the 
temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud, 'A voice from 
the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four 
winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 357 

a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a 
voice against the whole people.' This was his cry as 
he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of 
the city. However, certain of the most eminent among 
the populace, had great indignation at this dire cry 
of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great 
number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say 
anything for himself, or anything to those that chas- 
tised him, but still went on with the same words which 
he cried before. Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as 
the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine 
fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procura- 
tor, where he was whipped till his bones were laid 
bare ; yet did iiot he make any supplication for him- 
self, nor shed any tears ; but turning his voice to the 
most lamentable tones possible, at every stroke of the 
whip his answer was, 'Wo, wo, to Jerusalem.' And when 
Albinus (for he was then our procurator), asked him 
'Who he was 2 and whence he came, and why he 
uttered such words?' he made no manner of reply 
to what he said, but still did not leave off his melan- 
choly ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, 
and dismissed him. Now, during all the time that 
passed before the war began, this man did not go 
near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while 
he said so ; but he every day uttered these lamentable 
words, as if it were his premeditated vow, ' Wo, wo, to 



358 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Jerusalem.' Nor did he give ill words to those that 
beat him every day, nor good words to those that 
gave him food ; but this was his reply to all men, and, 
indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what 
was to come. This cry of his was the loudest at the 
festivals ; and he continued this ditty for seven years 
and five months, without growing hoarse or being 
tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his 
presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased ; 
for as he was going the rounds upon the wall he cried 
out with his utmost force, 'Wo, wo, to the city again, 
and to the holy house.' And just as he added at the 
last, 'Wo, wo, to myself also,' there came a stone out 
of one of the engines and smote him, and killed him 
immediately ; and as he was uttering the very same 
presage he gave up the ghost." ^^ By reflections 
upon these facts he continues: 

"Now if any one consider these things, he will 
find that God takes care of mankind, and by all 
ways possible foreshows to our race what is for their 
preservation, but that men perish by these miseries 
which they madly and voluntarily bring upon them- 
selves; for the Jews, by demolishing the tower of 
Antonia, had made their temple four-square, while 
at the same time they had it written in their sacred 
oracles that 'then should their city be taken, as well 

aoi JosKPnus' Wars of the Jews, book 6, ch. 5, sec. 3. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



as their holy house, when once their temple should 
become four-square.' But now, what did most elevate 
them in undertaking this war was an ambiguous oracle 
that was found also in the sacred writings, how 'about 
that time one from their country should become 
governor of the habitable earth.' The Jews took this 
prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and 
many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their 
determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the 
government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor 
in Judea. However, it is not possible for men to avoid 
fate, although they see it beforehand. But these men 
interpreted some of these signals according to their own 
pleasure, until their madness was demonstrated both 
by the taking of the city and their own destruction." ••• 
The foregoing chapter closes all the testimony we 
have to offer by way of reflections upon the Jew- 
ish mind, in disproof of an old doctrine which has 
been as prejudicial to the advancement of Christianity 
as it has been to the best interests of the human race. 
We now submit them, by way of contrast, to the 
judgment of the reader for his determination, satisfied 
that the evidence is ponderous and overwhelming in 
proof that the religious and the moral feelings are 
consequences of distinct and independent causes in 
the mind of man, 

ao3 Jus£PHU8' Waks ov tuk Jews, book 6, ch. 5, seo. 4. 



860 IIISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

In Abraham and his descendants there was a res- 
toration of man to his primitive morality, and it 
continued with them to that generation which imme- 
diately succeeded the death of Joseph. From that 
time forward, during their bondage in Egypt and 
down to their dispersion, this assumption of theology 
was one of the main productive elements of the great 
moral degeneracy of the Hebrews. The religious and 
the animal faculties of the mind in them were culti- 
vated to an extraordinary degree, and, as a consequence 
of this supremacy, the people under them alternated 
between the worship of God and the murder of their 
fellow men. No system of culture was inaugurated 
designed by its nature to stimulate the feelings of 
justice and of compassion, and those two noble 
faculties, instituted by the wisdom of Divine Provi- 
dence to properly adjust man in all his relations of 
life, perished from all influence over the mental 
horoscope of the Jews. 

Excepting the efforts made by, Socrates, there has 
been no change from that day to this. In lands of 
freedom, like the United States of America and the 
United Kingdom of Great Britain, the severe reflections 
of the press upon the injustice of individuals and the 
cruelty inflicted by savages and desperadoes, have had 
some tendency to stimulate those faculties into active 
vigilance. But while the old aggressive doctrine of 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 361 

theology is still acting upon the religious with no 
inflnence over the moral nature, and the schools and 
the universities of learning are still operating upon the 
intellectual powers, the external phenomena are rap- 
idly bringing the propensities forward to a position of 
more perfect empire over the entire soul. In the two 
last countries mentioned, they now overawe justice 
upon the bench, virtue in the pulpit and in the legis- 
lative halls of the nation. This we will demonstrate 
to be the case with the former when we come to trace 
the events which mark its decline. 

The course of religion has not so much tended to 
direct nations to the true principles of ethics, and to 
impress upon them the characteristics of morality, as 
to endorse the prevailing sentiments of the times, 
whatever those sentiments might be, short of down- 
right rejection of the authenticity and integrity of 
Divine revelation. This has met its undivided oppo- 
sition and condemnation. During the mediaeval period 
it was a lever in the hands of despots for the oppres- 
sion of the weak ; and this application of religion had 
become so commonly known as an auxiliary of central- 
ized power, that "No bishop, no king," became the 
logic of princes. If monarchial tenets were fashionable 
with the nation, it became an agent to reduce those 
tenets to practice, arguing the '■'-jure dimno"' of kings 
into public favor. If the equitable rights of man were 



362 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

generally acknowledged as most desirable among a 
people, they had the hearty support of the church, and 
any abridgement of his freedom, by anti-republican 
laws, was a violation of the sacred books. 

From the fifth to the fifteenth century, it did not 
prevent millions from being burnt at the stake and 
otherwise murdered for dissenting opinions. But from 
A. D. 1519, when Luther began his disputations with 
the Roman hierarchy, forward to the completion of 
the reformation, the outrages which it had perpetrated, 
roused the moral feelings of a portion of the white races 
into active life; and, as opposition begat protracted 
persecutions, the moral, with dissenters, continued to 
progress toward a condition of supremacy in the mind. 
This mental status, when reached in our British ances- 
tors, discarded, in a measure, moral hypocrisy, became 
a support to the true principles of Christianity, propor- 
tionally enforcing the obligations man is under to the 
moral laws. When this partial supremacy of the moral 
sentiments arrived in this country, religion, by their 
influence, opposed the crimes of the west, and engaged 
in a decided opposition to slavery both north and south. 
But in 1820, when there was an apparent change in 
the condition of mind in the Americans, when the 
symptoms of the times warranted the belief that the 
moral sentiments had become subordinate to the pro- 
pensities, although religion was much more popular, 



GENERAL INTEODUCTION. 863 

and had greatly extended the power of its influence, it 
lent its aid to enforce and to multiply African slavery 
then here in existence. 

Prior to 1850, the moral sentiments had been wan- 
ing for two generations. Religion both favored and 
opposed the wars of 1812 and 1847, the last being for 
the acquisition of slave territory, for the ostensible 
object of bringing this curse into such general use 
as to finally extinguish the remaining sentiments of 
morality, which still continued to manifest an active 
antagonism to the injustice of slavery. This was 
essentially a struggle between the moral and the 
animal; and religion, watching the contest, followed 
in the wake, and sided with whichever rose to power 
in the government. But when, by the continued efforts 
of the moral sentiments, through the greater develop- 
ment which they had apparently acquired in 1859 and 
1860, had very nearly divided the suffrages of the nation 
for and against slavery at the north, the political char- 
acter which religion then held somewhat corresponded 
to the ballots of the republican and democratic parties. 
As the abolition proclivities of the moral faculties 
grew more active and embittered the feelings of the 
North and the South in the conflict, religion, corre- 
sponding to the sentiments in the two different sections, 
both supported and condemned human bondage. In 
the South, and to some extent in the North, slavery 



364 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

was a divine institution, having been established ages 
before by Jehovah through the agency of the Hebrew 
patriarchs. He delivered the Jews into bondage to 
the Egyptians, to the Babylonians, and finally to the 
Romans. God had directed Jeremiah to say to his 
people, "I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in 
the land which thou knowest not," 2 o 3 u ^jj^ ^j^^g whole 
land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment ; and 
these nations" [the tribes of Israel] "shall serve the 
king of Babylon seventy years. ^"* The slave advocates 
continued, "Don't the Bible say 'cursed be Canaan,' 
and 'servants obey your masters.'" ^o^ g^it as religion 
was divided on this question, it, on the other hand, 
replied through its agents and servants by citing the 
golden rule : "Do unto others as ye would have them 
do unto you" ; and, "thou shalt neither vex a stranger 
nor oppress him,"^"' As the controversy sharpened 
the animosity of the North at the arguments and gar- 
bled authorities quoted from the Bible by the party in 
favor of the local evil, the abolitionists denounced 
them in the language of Christ: "Wo unto you, 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye are like 
unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful 
outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and 

203 Jeremiah, ch. 17, verse 4, 

204 Ibid., ch. 25, verse IL 

205 Mrs. H. B. S. for it, in Uncle Tom's Cabin. 

206 Exodus, ch. 22, verse 21. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 365 

all uncleanness. Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites ! for ye devour widow' s houses, and for 
pretense make long prayer : therefore ye shall receive 
the greater damnation. Ye serpents, ye generation of 
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell."2<'i 

But the peculiarity of the position assumed by 
religion on other questions was not less conspicuous. 

It was but a few years ago that certain parties, 
not drinkers and drunkards, but temperate men, 
foresaw that the old system of the .temperance cause 
was an utter failure, productive of no reform, and 
notwithstanding their eflforts in favor of the fallen, 
drunkenness was increasing at a fearful pace; that 
unless some more powerful barrier than had been 
previously used were interposed to arrest its progress, 
the sufferings of the helpless and the innocent would 
be greatly multiplied, the results impossible to fore- 
see, but of which, to say the least, the worst could 
but be anticipated, as intemperance was rapidly 
spreading to all ranks. These persons, after much 
careful reflection on the condition of the case, could 
discover but one remedy that would be effectual. 
The brewing and distillation in the country could be 
easily estopped by law; the crimes of importation 
and manufacture of ardent spirits could more easilj^ 
be suppressed than those of larceny and murder. 



207 Matthew, ch. 3. 



366 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Under these circumstances, not doubting the moral 
qualities of the masses, they organized themselves into 
a political party to carry this new system of reform 
into effect, which, when successful, would banish the 
suffering and misery arising from intemperance, car- 
rying happiness and prosperity to the hearthstones of 
the afflicted. All that was required was an united 
action by a majority of the people. 

Here was an opportunity for the exhibition of those 
great human principles, which the churches claim to 
be their peculiar province to foster into life and build 
up. Surely, said prohibitionists, most of whom were 
communicants of the churches, the religion of our 
Saviour cannot withhold its influence from a question 
which has as an end the purest of all earthly objects. 
Who, thought they, but Satan and his satellites, could 
oppose its progress and prevent its successful issue ? 
It was plain that the churches must support this 
moral question, (if religion have the efficacy claimed 
for it,) or lend its power for the dissemination of crime 
and the worst forms of human misery. Should the 
chosen ground of the church be the former, (and who 
for a moment doubted that it would?) one of the 
greatest reforms would be completed — a reform not 
much inferior to the emancipation of African slavery 
itself. And after the organization of the prohibition 
party, what position did the churches assume ou this 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 367 

great question? Mirahile dictu! they continned in the 
services of political parties, cormpt politicians, and 
those who were occupied in vending poisonous liquors 
to the drunkard. Notwithstanding the appeals of the 
prohibition advocates to the better sense and feeling of 
the churches, they still continued to contribute to the 
orphanage and widowhood of our large cities, assisting 
to carry want, squalor, suffering, starvation and death 
into the lowly hovels of the poor. 

When the churches were reminded that thousands, 
subject to the control of appetite, were daily sinking 
into their graves, and, according to the words of our 
Saviour, destined to be lost in a future life, prohibi- 
tionists received the flattering reply that "the cause 
of it is in the temperance movement. And," they con- 
tinued substantially, "if persons are bound to drink 
themselves to death and into the displeasure of God, 
they must abide the consequences as of their own 
making." In other words, "What is that to us? 
see thou to that." From time to time they were 
implored to come forward with the might which they 
possessed, and assist in expelling intoxicating liquors 
from the land, as, in consequence, thousands of hapless 
children were suffering in winter from cold, and starv- 
ing to death. But answer came from them, "the cause 
of it is in the temperance movement ; for by agitation 
of it the question is brought into notoriety, and people 



368 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

are thereby impelled to tipple, finally becoming habitual 
drunkards. If intoxicating liquors are purposely with- 
held from the public, they will obtain them somehow or 
other, for upon such acts of others they feel an impul- 
sion to indulge." "But, sirs, have you no sympathy 
for the suffering women and children." "Oh, yes ! we 
have as much as you or your party ; we would do any- 
thing for the innocently afflicted." "Then, sirs, give 
us a vote to dry up this fountain of evil." "Oh! it 
would do no good ; my vote would be lost, as you can't 
hope to succeed. Besides, the democratic party would 
come into power and 'get the niggers back into slav- 
ery.' And, at all events, you will certainly fail ; you 
cannot carry prohibition ; it is a hopeless undertaking, 
as temperance has often been tried before in other 
forms, and in localities, too, where the people were 
bound to exterminate intemperance. Just join our 
party, and I trust the next legislature will do some- 
thing to help the cause more than you can accomplish 
by yourselves." 

"No, we shall not fail, we shall succeed; our cause 
is a just one. Likely our hold on life is as frail as 
your own, but so long as we do remain we will use our 
might in wrestling with this monster evil. So long as 
its operations exist to torment our souls by its gen- 
eration of misery; so long as murders come to our 
knowledge, to which brewers, distillers, importers and 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 369 

an apathetic public are contributory causes ; so long 
as the wailings of helpless children and of broken 
hearted women, victims to the cruelty of your indif- 
ferent policy, continue to harrow up our feelings by 
their pitiful afflictions, you may expect no compromise, 
no peace from us, for we will oppose it till our last 
breath is expired. Will you not do as much as to 
remain neutral, not go to the polls, not vote at all? 
This, at least, you owe to your humanity and to the 
professions of your faith. Slavery is abolished ; the 
fifteenth amendment haB become a part of the constitu- 
tion ; there are, therefore, no vital points of contention 
between the republican and democratic parties. They 
have both served the purposes for which they were 
organized, their labor is finished, and they have but 
a formal existence, barely holding together for the 
benefit of time-serving politicians." 

"We will not remain neutral; your party is made 
up of disappointed office seekers, croakers and men 
who look on the dark side of all questions, in con- 
sequence of soured minds produced by frustrated 
ambitions while members of the old parties, men who 
are now trying to run a party of their own for their 

own emolument." 

» 
As the interchange of sentiment between morality 

and propensity reaches this stage of development, 

if the dead are not raised up to rebuke the moral 

24 



370 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

hypocrisy of social power, the dialogue at all events, 
in all such cases usually comes abruptly to an end. 

If the above be not exact quotations, word for word, 
of what passed between the reputed parties, they are, 
in substancej what actually took place between them, 
to the author's own personal knowledge 

Though such were the attitude of almost the entire 
Christian membership toward this great reform move- 
ment, they soon afterward made an effort to accomplish 
the same end by the spiritual conversion of venders 
of alcohol. But it was observable that during the time 
"the temperance wave" was passing over the country, 
its leading advocates held bitter feelings against pro- 
hibition, which tended to render their fidelity to the 
cause of temperance, if not directly doubtful, at least 
somewhat ambiguous. It, however, helped prohibi- 
tion, as many of the leading clergy throughout the 
country endorsed political action. 

While religion has been increasing in strength by 
additional wealth and membership; while church 
communicants have in number gained on a growing 
population, there has been in the body of the churches, 
with their communicants, such a degeneration of mor- 
als, that it perfectly staggers one by its magnitude, 
clouding his feelings with the saddest reflections. It 
not only attracts the attention of the student of passing 
(events, but of the press and of the more advanced 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 371 

clergy of the day. And the religious press, bound 
not to be gagged by the general cry of progression, 
seem to have some understanding of our great degen- 
eration in morals, to which they give corresponding 
expressions. The following, from one of the best and 
also one of the most liberal religious periodicals of the 
times, appears to see the want of efficacy in religion 
to check this growing dearth. Under the head of 
"The Religion we want," it says: "We want a relig- 
ion that bears heavily, not only on 'the exceeding 
sinfulness of sin,' but on the exceeding rascality of 
lying and stealing. A religion that banishes small 
measures from the counters, small baskets from the 
stalls, pebbles from the cotton bags, clay from the 
paper, sand from the sugar, chiccory from the coffee, 
alum from the bread, and water from the milk cans. 
The religion that is going to save the world will not put 
all the big strawberries at the top, and all the little ones 
at the bottom. It will not make one-half a pair of 
shoes of good leather, so that the first shall redound 
to the maker' s credit, and the second to his cash. It 
will not put Jouvin's stamp on Jenkins' kid gloves; 
nor make Paris bonnets in the back room of a Boston 
milliner shop ; nor let a piece of velvet that professes 
to measure twelve yards, come to an untimely end in 
the tenth ; nor a spool of sewing-silk that vouches for 
twenty yards, be nipped in the bud at fourteen and a 



372 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

half; nor all-wool delaines and all-linen handkercMefs 
be amalgamated with clandestine cotton; nor coats 
made of old rags pressed together be sold to the unsus- 
pecting public for real broadcloth. It does not put 
bricks at five dollars a thousand into chimneys it con- 
tracts to build with seven dollar material ; nor smuggle 
white pine into floors that have paid for hard pine; 
nor leave yawning cracks in closets where boards 
ought to join ; nor daub the ceilings that ought to be 
smoothly plastered ; nor make window blinds of slats 
that cannot stand the wind, and paint that cannot stand 
the sun, and fastenings that may be looked at but on 
no account touched. The religion that is going to 
sanctify the world, pays its debts. It does not con- 
sider that forty cents returned for one hundred cents 
given, is according to the gospel, though it may be 
according to the law. It looks on a man who has 
failed in trade, and who continues to live in luxury, 
as a thief." 208 

We can imagine that others may suppose this 
developed phase of religion, which has run through 
all ages, manifesting the same fatal tendency to endorse 
the popular sentiments, and embrace the vices and 
crimes of the times, is not religion at all, but is only 
characteristic of those who profess and do not. But 



2o3 iloKMXG CxAK, Jauuary U, 1874. By this number quoted from Teui 
Christian. 



GENERAL INTEODUOTION. 373 

this is admitting the question. So far as religion 
causes man to repent "from the error of his ways," 
(from not reverencing God, and for being indifferent to 
the worship of Him in the spirit,) it is true in theory 
and in fact. 

The position which the clergy hold assumes, with- 
out evidence, that the religious primitive elements are 
productive of moral impressions, when those religious 
faculties are active on spiritual objects. But we hold 
that one faculty does not perform the functions of 
another ; that the religious and the moral faculties act 
as independent causes, nowise necessarily involved or 
related, their operations resulting in different effects. 
That they, in their primitive constitution, being thus 
distinct, thus independent functionally and constitu- 
tionally, are not receptive of the same external influ- 
ence. The one does not produce those characteristics 
which are referable to the other as primitive cause. It 
necessarily follows that a system of instruction which 
is applicable to the development of the one is not to 
the other. 

The question is not whether religion be true, but 
has it been properly applied, subjectively to designed 
objects, to the adapted, to such as are its receiving 
elements, to those mental powers which, by the wisdom 
of God, were adjusted for its reception and evolution. 
We say not ; that the ground covered by the clergy in 



374 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

all ages, and to which they still tenaciously cling, has 
been too broad, and, to say the least, is wholly unsup- 
ported by Divine revelation. The moral and the relig- 
ious histories of the Hebrews and Carthaginians show 
conclusively that their claims to the broad efficacy of 
religion, have not the shadow of a foundation upon 
which to repose their assumption. 

The moral commandments in the Bible were 
addressed to the moral sentiments of the mind 
through the intellect, and not to the religious. A 
being that is destitute of predominant moral quali- 
ties, is not competent to obey moral injunctions. But 
Creative Wisdom has^ given man an intellect, by the 
operations of which, if he be destitute of sufficient 
moral causes, he can work out his own temporal 
salvation. Any portion of human organization upon 
which culture is intelligently directed, can be made 
to overcome hereditary defects, and hence the con- 
demnation of man should be, not so much for the 
crimes which he commits, as for the neglect to culti- 
vate the moral faculties to such capacity as enables 
him to obey moral laws. This culture cannot be 
wrought by homiletic discourses through the induce- 
ments which they contain of future rewards and 
punishments, nor by social ostracism, nor by any of 
those religious exercises which produce excited ope- 
rations of the spiritual feelings, nor by firm resolves 



GENEEAL INTEODUCTION. 375 

and stubborn determinations. Each of these, the 
religions and the moral, faculties, being in itself a 
positive organization, is capable of positive develop- 
ment when subjected to scientific principles. 

The ecclesiastical order has had control of the 
white races for thirteen centuries, and the saddest 
consequences have been the result. The churches 
have not only failed to protect the moral qualities of 
their communicants, but the very clergy itself, at 
times during that long period, has exhibited the very 
worst qualities of the outlaw. It has not only failed 
to moralize the world, but has been wholly unable to 
preserve itself from great moral degeneracy. 

If the qualities of religious devotees are, at times 
with the non-professing world, thus in frequent and 
rapid progress of demoralization, what relevancy is 
there in talking of the "conversion of the people," 
when, as is supposed, virtue will ensue and evil 
disappear? 

Such being, then, the hopelessness of religion to 
arrest those growing vices, which now so seriously 
threaten the dissolution of society by debauching the 
greater portion of its members, our attention must be 
directed to some other method by which the people 
can be protected and the republic preserved, 



CHAPTER VI. 



GENERAL INTR0DI7CTI01T. 



Significance of the Mental Faculties drawn from their Organic Quali- 
ties — Their Primitive State — Causes of Degeneracy — Course of 
Degeneracy — Moral Condition of Carthage, of Greece, of Rome and 
of western Asia— Demoralization of Rome inherited, through mod- 
em European nations, by settlers of North America— Enquiry into 
the Depravity of Man, to ascertain if that Depravity be not a 
Derangement of the Moral Powers — Causes which tended to Restore 
the Moral Sentiments in the inhabitants of Great Britain — Improved 
Condition with Defects transmitted to Pioneers of the Thirteen 
Colonies — The present Degeneracy considered a relapse Into that 
Derangement which attended our Remote Ancestors in the Middle 
Ages — Necessity of so treating the Mind to effect for it, In the 
United States, a healthy tone of action, by which the Equitable 
Features of the Republic may be rendered Enduring Establishments. 



To finish up the introduction, it remains for us to 
make some enquiry into that phrenic condition of 
which we find that our ancestors were possessed at 
the time of their resistance to the aggressive measures 
of the House of Brunswick. This will embrace a very 
short chapter. We shall attempt to discover the men- 
tal status of the nation at its inception, and afterward, 
in a subsequent part of this volume, by retrospection 
of events, its declination, which, we verily believe, has 

(376) 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 377 

been more rapid than that of any other power which 
authentic histories record- 
But in order to fully understand that status, it is, 
we think, first necessary to become acquainted with 
that mental condition at which, in the lapse of ages, 
the human mind had arrived. This will shed some 
light upon the question of the hereditary qualities of 
those European races which are now flooding this 
country as well as our own, and indicate how far we 
are possessed of the mental deformity which charac- 
terized the inhabitants of Rome just before its final 
overthrow. By contrasting the primitive morality of 
man also to that which the human mind now occupies, 
we shall likewise be somewhat able to determine the 
departure, and finally approximate to that degree of 
alienation to which the mental powers, by various 
causes, have been subjected. It will also show, we 
hope, that constitutional governments, unlike organic 
bodies, are not subject to the laws of decay. 

The very fact of man's having moral elements is 
evidence that they were designed by Creative Wisdom 
to govern all the rest of his mental nature. For if 
this were not so, why were the feelings of justice and 
of compassion created, unless it were the design to 
suppress the feelings of injustice, and those other 
perverted and anti-compassionate feelings which give 
rise to acts of cruelty. If it were designed fcr man 



378 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

to be just, it was not that he should be unjust ; if it 
were intended for him to be compassionate, it was not 
that he should be pitiless. These two positions are 
antithetical and cannot, therefore, be held by one 
individual at the same time ; the one or the other he 
must surrender. And again, if he surrender the one 
he must hold the other, as he cannot deny both, nor 
can he adopt an equal modification of them. The 
question, therefore, calls on us to elect, first dropping 
all conceived prejudices, which we shall consider most 
reasonable, whether man's moral nature was designed 
to be governed by his animal, or whether the latter 
was to be controlled by the former ; or, if an individual 
think he can take a tenable position between the two 
extremes, whether he was created the sport of circum- 
stances, in such manner as to alternate under the 
control of the animal and then the moral ; or if he 
had, at the time of his first organization, certain laws 
of mind as well as of physical life by which he should 
be governed and protected. 

The natural laws are not, in themselves an evil but 
a positive blessing, nor are they in their effects, but 
there is an evil in their misapplication. Thus in their 
application to the growth of certain genera of animals, 
the latter can be improved in size, beauty, speed, 
strength, in quality of edible fiber or of adipose sub- 
stance, by the wisdom of man ; or they can be caused 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 379 

to degenerate in size, beauty, speed, strength and all 
those other good qualities with which man is now 
pretty thorouglily acquainted, until those laws gen- 
erate deformity, or completely extinguish some one 
or all of them. The latter view, when carried out in 
practical life, may be said, with truth, to be an evil 
application of the natural laws, because, principally, 
their effect is detrimental to the interests of man as 
well as to the proper being of the animal species. It 
may also be said that such is a misapplication of the 
natural laws. But if left to themselves those same 
laws will generate perfection. It is well known to all 
that they will restore injured parts of organic life, 
such aa broken limbs, wounds of flesh, and diseased 
bodHy organs. And thus the natural laws not only 
endeavor to preserve whatever they apply to, but 
struggle to correct the errors into which man has 
fallen, by restoring that which his carelessness has 
injured, or attempted to destroy through desire. 
Although there be no analogy between mental fac- 
ulties and physical organs, yet there is one in the 
application of the natural laws to the operation of 
their growth and decay. This is all we seek to claim 
of the analogy. 

When, therefore, man was created, every faculty of the 
mind, and every organ of the body, was made in such 
manner as to be regulated by certain laws, establishing 



380 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

its growth, and more especially its preservation in 
a certain relation of harmony to all other portions 
of his mental and physical powers. And, taking him 
altogether, he was impressed with a determinable and 
intelligible constitution in all of his outward expres- 
sions of features and bodily organizations. And hence 
it seems but reasonable for us to conclude that, what- 
ever faculties of the mind and organs of the body there 
are, it was the design of Providence that they should 
be in the keeping of certain rules of action, and not 
alternate under the mild sway of the moral and then 
under the violence of passion, which, through such an 
organization, would subject man to the sport of circum- 
stances. If it were not, therefore, intended in the 
beginning that the rest of the affective faculties of the 
mind should be controlled, at one time by the moral, 
and at another by the animal, faculties, it must, per 
force of reason, have been designed by Nature, that 
either the moral or the animal, the one or the other, 
class, should exercise the functions of sovereign con- 
trol at all times, exclusive of the other, except a 
subordinate condition, like the rest of the faculties, 
at which, at the moment of creation, it was placed. 

It evidently, then, not being the design that the two 
should exist in equilibrium, and influence the destiny 
of man pro rata to their mutual relation, could it 
have been intended that the animal faculties should 



GENERAL INTRODUCTIOISr. 381 

be placed in actual position of supreme authority over 
the rest of the entire metaphysical nature of man? 
This is an important question. And first of all let us 
make a short inquiry into the essential natures of the 
animal faculties. To make the question more readily 
understood, we may say that it would have been super- 
fluous for the Unseen Power to have prepared a record 
containing the uses to which are applied every organ, 
every faculty in the animal creation, and more espe- 
cially those which are proper to man. External 
constitution in the material world, we repeat, plainly 
and fully impresses our understanding with the defi- 
nite character of every object with which man comes 
in contact. For example, the web-foot of the duck 
indicates to the naturalist that Nature adapted its 
possessor for aquatic elements. So, too, large nerves 
of motion connected to proportionate wings, instruct 
him that the organization to which they belong was 
intended for a bird of flight. But when the web-foot 
and the large nerves of motion are joined to wings 
which maintain their due proportion, they form a 
compound organization by which the naturalist is 
apprised that it is both a water fowl and a bird of 
flight. And thus it is by a method of observation in 
the characteristics of particulars, that philosophers 
rise to conclusions upon general laws governing 
beings in the organic world. By a similar method, 



382 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

it is not only very possible, bnt very probable, that 
we can determine, not hy outward structure, bnt by 
internal primitive quality, the position which the ani- 
mal faculties occupy in the empire of mind. Let us 
inquire into the constituent elements of those faculties, 
which elements we, perhaps, cannot comprehend by 
external structure, but can by outward acts. It is the 
duty of one to acquire sustenance for the whole being, 
both mental and physical; of one to ingest the food 
which the first has supplied ; of one to execute and 
carry into efiective operations the will of the whole 
mind ; of one to continue the species ; of one to com- 
bat and overcome the difficulties with which the 
pathway of man is constantly beset; and of one to 
inform us, with a sort of instinctive penetration, of 
those combinations of external circumstances to which, 
if we were not adjusted by some internal monitor, 
might more frequently involve us in disaster, and as 
frequently blast our hopes. * These are the principal 
elementary properties of which the animal faculties are 
composed. It will readily occur to the mind of any 
reader of ordinary sagacity, that the constituent quali- 
ties entering into their composition are limited, have 
a determinate function, p,re particular, and not gen- 
eral, in the primary nature of their several activities. 



X It will here be understood that we adopt the nomenclature and defl- 
nitloDS given by phrenologists. See former part of this work, ch. 1 and 3. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 383 

Acquisitiveness supplies man witli the necessaries of 
life, but, under perverted action, surrounds its pos- 
sessor with superabundance, adorning his person and 
belittling his name with those foolish titles and orna- 
ments which bespeak for the wearer the contracted 
nature of his mental being. The function of the second 
is to refurnish the exhausted vital powers with those 
substances which are required to support life. The 
office of the third is to carry into effect the intentions of 
which the individual, at the time, is possessed : under 
perverted action, it is tinctured with the bitterness 
of hatred, is revengeful, and not infrequently commits 
acts of murder. The object of the fifth has been 
sufficiently stated above : when changed from its legit- 
imate sphere to one of irregular activity, it indulges 
in feuds and wars. The functional nature and essen- 
tial primitive qualities of the fourth and sixth, have 
been fully explained in the manner of their definition.* 
And hence it must be seen without further explication 
that the several faculties have no superintending sig- 
nificance, and were, therefore, placed by nature in a 
subordinate station to some other higher and more 
general internal power. 



2 The names of these faculties, for with their anatomy we have nothing 
to do, sometimes called by phrenologists, propensities, are Acquisitiveness, 
Alimentiveness, Destructiveness, Amativeness, Combativeness and Secretive- 
ness. See PHR£NOiX)aT, OB XH£ DociBuns of ihb M£NXAI> Fowubs, by J. 
G. Sfcbzhexm. 



384 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

It has been stated in the former part of this work, 
that the intellectual faculties, in their function, occupy 
a subordinate position like the propensities. But of 
these and the religious faculties, it has been proven 
that they, in the history of their acts among the Car- 
thaginians, the Hebrews, and the Greeks, have no more 
than a particular and limited sphere of activity. But 
if this be admitted of them, and still claimed by the 
votaries of these systems of error that they exercise 
moral functions, we repeat that it has been fully proven 
and completely established, that while the one, and 
the other, were the most amply developed by culture, 
they licensed the animal faculties to the commission 
of outrageous wrongs and horrid cruelties. Had the 
religious and the intellectual faculties possessed any 
constituent elements of morality, the feelings of justice 
and compassion had certainly suppressed the wrongs 
which the propensities perpetrated. 

But the elementary primitive qualities of the moral 
powers have both a particular and a general scope 
over the operations of the mind. It is the province of 
one (conscientiousness) to see that justice accompanies 
and enters into the qualities of every act which follows 
as a consequence of individual existence. From the 
simplest relations in private, to those of the most 
complicated in public, life, in the hovel, and in the 
legislative chambers of nations, every one is conscious 



GENERAL INTEODUOTION. 386 

that, notwithstanding its degenerate condition, less or 
more impression is produced by it upon the feelings of 
the law-maker, and upon those of the boor. It adds 
some ingredient, however small, to the speculative cal- 
culations of the merchant, to the skill of the physician, 
to the dextrous sagacity of the lawyer, to the acts of 
the clergy, of the farmer, artizan, and, in fact, it enters 
into the operations of all classes, ranks and professions 
known in the world. These are facts which none 
can dispute, and hence need no further treatment to 
bring them to every one's understanding as recognized 
truths. If there be such an element as justice in the 
human mind, which none can doubt, there is one which 
has a generaP scope in its operations, effecting at once, 
by way of direct government, the simplest and the 
most complicated problems of metaphysical action. 

There is one other phrenic power of a fundamental 
characteristic, to which we are much indebted, not- 
withstanding our course in the past has had a 
tendency to destroy, and has, to a very considerable 
degree, extinguished its influence over our perverted or 
fallen condition. Benevolence expresses the abstract 
character of the constituent elements which enter into 
the peQuliarities of its constitution. It has been felt 



3 In the sense in which this term is here used, we desire to be under- 
stood as meaning control over the operations of all the mental powers, 
universal and not common in its import to the mental elements of any ouo 
mmd. What is true of the term of one mind, is universally so to all. 

26 



386 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

in different degrees by most all mankind. Its action 
is antagonistic to that of those faculties which., when 
perverted, gloat in the perpetration of cruelty, revel 
in mockery at the wailings of a broken heart, and are 
wholly indifferent in witnessing the agonizing pangs 
of their victims. Its effects in normal conditions are 
prodigious, softening or changing the action of the 
harsher faculties, forcing them to contribute their mite 
to alleviate the woes of earth, and to extend universal 
tolerance to the conflicting opinions of mankind on the 
great variety of subjects upon which they are divided. 
The two last faculties, taken singly or together, have 
not only a particular scope, but a general superintend- 
ence over the whole conduct of the individual. They 
are internal monitors, given by Providence, or adapted 
by nature, to carry an impression of the elements of 
justice and compassion into the qualities of every act 
of every human being, and that, too, was designed to 
accompany him during his entire passage from "his 
cradle to his grave." Under subordination to the 
propensities, they give rise to dissimulation, to 
hypocrisy, and to fraud in the conduct of persons, 
of societies, and of nations. They clothe the indi- 
vidual with power to assume, at his pleasure, all those 
attributes which are directly referable to their action, 
by which he is enabled to practice his craft upon 
his fellow. While societies have the appearance of 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 387 

virtue, and denounce, under the sanctity of this garb, 
the errors of the fallen, they secretly practice their 
vices. It is now well known to all educated minds 
that to successfully direct the affairs of state, it is 
first necessary to master all possible positions which 
dissimulation may assume. 

Thus having traced, and we hope satisfactorily, the 
moral faculties, by an investigation into the bearing of 
their elementary properties, to the genesis of their 
primitive condition, we have arrived at a stage or 
chapter at which it was our desire, if it be consistent 
with truth, to draw some conclusions with reference to 
man's position past and present. It has been proven 
that the intellectual and the religious faculties have no 
moral action ; and shown also, that the animal facul- 
ties have but a particular and determinate function to 
perform. And it has, by an exhibition of their quali- 
ties, been established that the moral powers have a 
directive action upon all the other faculties of which 
the mind is composed. 

This was the condition in which man existed in the 
primitive ages, and to it his inward, as well as his 
outward, deportment corresponded in all relations of 
the internal and the external world. To this perfect 
moral position are not to be imputed the different 
phases of deception, hypocrisy and fraud which were 
characteristic of succeeding ages. During this state 



388 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of the mental powers, man was perfectly rational, 
exhibiting none of those extremes of feelings which 
denote a want of harmony and of normality of mind 
now so common to all the different races of mankind. 
In the course of these essays it has appeared as most 
probable that the first fall of the moral elements from 
their supreme position occurred among the later inhab- 
itants of primitive times by deformity at birth. In the 
next generation this departure was increased by the 
effects of external phenomena emanating from the 
same natal deformity. 

It is most probable, also, that some sort of religious 
ceremony and theological instruction which, by the 
errors of its oracles, went beyond the designs of its 
origin, assuming that the system contained everything 
necessary for the best interests of man, began its cul- 
ture of the spiritual feelings, and thus developed them 
at the sacrifice of the moral, by an omission of all dis- 
cipline of the latter. That this was the course of the 
sacerdocy we have the best evidence for believing, as 
we find it to have been their conduct in the earliest 
recorded ages which are authentic. This system of 
controlling and cultivating the mental powers must 
have had an earlier time for its origin than that which 
is mentioned in either sacred or profane history. In 
other words, its beginning must have antedated by 
several centuries the period of its narrated action. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 389 

About two thonsand years before the Christian era, 
it was already established and bore the appearance 
of an organized system in Egypt, in every nation of 
central and of western Asia. It had penetrated and 
become a durable institution in all the half-civilized 
tribes which were known to the intellectual classes 
of the Egyptians, of the Hebrews and of the Persians. 
It held a power second to none but that of the heredit- 
ary chieftains of the tribes and nations of the east, of 
the west, of the north and of the south. From the 
completion of its systematic organization it manifested 
great energy of action, became productive of enormous 
culture to the spiritual feelings, and finally resulted in 
the superstition of all classes. Not very modest in its 
presumptions, it put forward claims for effecting a 
higher terrestrial condition for man by his manifest 
moral improvement. While it thus pretended to do all 
for his best earthly interest, it contributed to extin- 
guish every one but his bare hope in eternal life. From 
the time the ecclesiastical establishments had become 
permanent down to 700 B. C, a period of more than 
thirteen centuries, the moral powers became the 
victims of external phenomena and theological assump- 
tion. Defective hereditary moral elements, external 
phenomena and ecclesiastical dogmatism combined 
in their operations, producing a continuing injury to 
man's highest and noblest powers. There was no 



390 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

accession of any importance to the ranks of these 
three causes, until the development of philosophy in 
the Hellenic states. 

For thirteen centuries, at least, we know that the 
moral elements sustained an uninterrupted contest 
against three opposing forces for their own restora- 
tion to the mental supremacy of the primitive ages^ 
Although they were constantly lessened in their influ- 
ence, they could not well be wholly extinguished from 
being, and were destined to receive redoubled opposi- 
tion down to the time of the fall of the Roman empire 
in the west and the establishment of the papacy. At 
length, by the study of philosophy and the rigid cul- 
ture flowing from it, a fourth, an external, element was 
added to this compound antagonism, and although 
this new auxiliary directed its operations to a new 
field, to the intellectual, it rendered, in this great 
conflict of constituent elements, the waning position 
of the moral faculties not the less critical and mor- 
tal. Three phenomena, having labored rigorously for 
thirteen centuries, had given not the least evidence 
of decay, but had, on the contrary, increased the 
weight of their influence by time and activity. But 
when the fourth element added its rapid act-ion to the 
former number, the disappearance of the moral was 
so marked that it becomes the distinguishing feature 
in the history of those ages. From the time of this 



GENEEAL INTRODUCTION. 391 

JTmction of Grecian philosophy to those causes already 
mentioned, down to the third century before Christ, 
Babylon was in ruins, the other powerful monarchies 
of western Asia had hopelessly fallen, gross supersti- 
tion and intellectual darkness reigned in silence around 
the monuments of Egypt, and the political institutions 
of Greece and of Carthage were, comparatively, in 
dust and in ashes. Oriental bigotry and conceit were 
confounded in their political calculations, could not 
comprehend the reasons why western barbarism had 
triumphed over eastern piety. Ignorant of the true 
sources of government and the causes of their perpe- 
tuity, they marveled at the mysterious ways which 
the wisdom of the gods had in disposing of the 
prosperity and magnificence of powerful kingdoms. 
This conquest of the east by the west was one of 
deeper significance than the mere victory of one polit- 
ical state in battle over that of another : to the defeated 
it was a blast that all time could not heal. Desolation 
preceded rather than followed the footsteps of the 
warrior; ruined buildings and devastated estates 
making themselves prominent in the memory of the 
historian. The desolation was a complete waste of 
those elements upon which alone civil society and 
constitutional government can be either founded or 
maintained. There was no prospect of their revival 
without a new creation. 



392 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Within three centuries from the beginning of the 
sixth before Christ, the proud master, the haughty 
noble, the king of kings, of Asia, were at the feet of 
the rude inhabitants of Europe. But at the year one 
of the Christian era, it will be observed, that these 
causes had proceeded farther westward than the west- 
ern boundary of Grreece, and farther southward than 
the southern shore of the Mediterranean, had pene- 
trated Europe and Africa ; Greece, Syracuse, and the 
other nations of the Mediterranean, were dependent on 
Rome, and the plow of formality had given the final 
touches of annihilation to the last seat of opulence, of 
magnificence, of learning, and of power in the south. 
Accustomed to think only of the ways of acquiring 
wealth to satisfy their ambitions and passions, this 
doomed people did not understand the causes which, 
although they had been witnesses of them for seven 
hundred years, had leveled nation after nation. 
Although Rome, by the forty-fifth year before Christ, 
is said to have conquered the world, that, which had 
ruined the east and the south, had already begun its 
operations at its capital, and the equitable rights of 
the republic had given place to the inequitable mights 
of the empire. But before this political crisis in the 
republic of Rome, the rigid moral principles indoc- 
trinated into the minds of youth, by parental instruc- 
tion, had, for several centuries, preserved them from 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 393 

comipting principles, had resisted the action of exter- 
nal phenomena, and the encroachments of a defective 
religious instruction, by keeping the moral raised to 
an equilibrium with the spiritual feelings. As long as 
this mental condition existed, the liberty of the state 
was in no great danger from the ambition of any of its 
own citizens, for the violent action of the propensities 
was in part suppressed. But the latter, in times of 
danger, by being thus partially subjected to the influ- 
ence of the moral, became a support to the state ; and, 
however selfish, however unjust and despotic all must 
consider it, it was under this very mental condition 
that the Romans performed their greatest conquests, 
and finally subdued the greater part of the habitable 
earth. At the beginning of the third century before 
Christ, Grecian philosophy and the effeminate customs 
of the east and the south, had made no very consider- 
able advancement among the inhabitants of Rome. 

Toward the close of the last half of this century, 
there was a change, and the great question which 
weighed most upon the minds of mankind of the intel- 
ligent world, was the direction from which, in future 
times, laws were likely to emanate to restrain man's 
free action, whether from the south or from the north, 
whether the ruthless ambition of the former was to 
triumph over the rude virtues of the latter. Would 
Rome fall by conquest, or would Carthage be subdued. 



894 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

But the sequel to the solution of this difficult problem 
soon determined that both had fallen, it terminating 
against the latter no more than against the former. The 
African dominions of Carthage were the abode of men 
whose mental powers were deranged; their higher 
nature had fallen in subjection to their lower; their 
prosperity was one of the latter and not of the former. 
At the breaking out of hostilities of the second Punic 
war, Carthage was a great madhouse. And when she 
transported her armies into the vicinity of Rome, the 
mental diseases with which the Carthaginians were 
afliicted, infected the Romans. The corrupting prin- 
ciples of the former had not made those impressions 
on the virtuous qualities of the latter in the first 
Punic war, which they were destined to receive in 
the second. It was in the second that Rome received 
a stab which, as an external cause, without the aid 
of the diverting tendencies of intellectual culture, 
must have, in the end, proved mortal, not to her 
independence only, but to her freedom also. All 
tendencies to fidelity, to chastity, and to that noble 
system of economy for which the Romans had ever 
been most remarkable, were sadly shaken by the cor- 
rupt and profligate manners of the Carthaginians. The 
sixteen years which the latter continued on the terri- 
tory of the former, in the vicinity of their capital, 
were sufficient to produce lasting impressions upon the 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 395 

minds of the young and middle-aged generations then 
in existence, and to give a direct and powerful deter- 
mination to the feelings of their minds. * During this 
sixteen years in which the worst passions in the people 
of both powers were constantly exerted and kept in 
the greatest activity, there was a great change in the 
conduct of those Romans who lived in proximity to 
the scene of conflict or partook in its strife. It was 
in this manner that the vices of the south began, and 
continued to bear, month after month, and year after 
year, on the animal faculties of the Romans, cultivating 
them into such an abnormal condition, that they were, 
by the close of the war, raised to such a permanent 
position over the moral, as to become ever after pro- 
ductive of naught but those crimes and vices which, 
before, had been more properly limited to the south in 
this portion of the west. But as the Roman people were 
nearly all immediately engaged in this conflict of inde- 
pendence, for the second Punic war involved this ques- 
tion, the corrupting vices of the south extended their 
blighting influences to the great masses of the nation. 



4 It will be seen that this period would extend the last part of middle life 
to the borders of old age, and that of youth to middle age, by which, in all 
probability, any people like the Romans, whose virtues had been barely suflB- 
clent to repress a disposition for the commission of crime by that of conquest, 
there would be decided difference in the conduct of the two generations 
before the commencement of the war and after it had closed. These two 
generations would form a very large class from which the succeeding gen- 
erations would inherit their habits of thought and modes of feeling, and 
strive to imitate them in the false glory of a military life. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

After these positive influences had stood and con- 
tinued to act upon the propensities of the Romans 
for sixteen years, their moral feelings were to a great 
extent extinguished, and, by consequence the founda- 
tions of the republic were destroyed. Although the 
time which the political form was destined to remain 
must be considered to have been uncertain, the causes 
of the death of its internal qualities were already 
secure. But the political government was of small 
consideration when compared with those evil qualities 
which the Komans, by nature, were destined to trans- 
mit to succeeding generations. This is the question 
which more immediately concerns us, for, however 
remote it may be considered, however humiliating the 
fact may be, we came by lineal descent from some 
portion of the degenerated inhabitants of the Roman 
empire. 

The bad princiDles of the Carthaginians only 
ceased to be when the sources of their origin had 
come to an end When Carthage was annihilated 
and its people had perished, the ill example of 
their conduct no longer held an educating influ- 
ence over the minds of mankind. But before 
their mortality they had given root to a plant and 
cultivated it in a northern clime,, which was destined 
to bear the most bitter fruit to the inhabitants of 
Rome and modem Europe. Their evils survived 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 397 

them, and if not with all the force of African matu- 
rity, they were bom, partly developed, and rapidly 
growing to such proportions as to bid fair to as 
fully deprave the north as they had the south. 
Before Carthage disappeared from among nations, 
causes had been planted by her in Rome, and there 
fostered with such care, that they became permanent, 
formidable and generative in their position, produc- 
ing the saddest consequences to Roman posterity in 
succeeding ages. 

When, by the expunction of Carthage, Rome was 
without a rival, the principles of conquest, (might 
makes right,) which had ever been the doctrine of 
the former, became the guiding star of the latter, 
and she accordingly directed her arms to the three 
remaining quarters of the globe. The shattered 
remains of two universal empires, Babylon and 
Persia, and the populations of those less formidable 
states of which they had formerly been composed, 
were doomed again to undergo the formalities of con- 
quest to delusively flatter the vanities of Rome by their 
testimony, not to the potency, but to the frailty and 
general moral debility which had seized upon the vital 
life of the republic, and was rapidly drawing its exist- 
ence to a close. Although the effeminate manners of 
the Medes, ^ and it is ventured that of the Babylonians 

S "Gradual degeneracy of the Persians."— Xenophon's Cyrop-iEDIA. ■' 



398 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

also, were the principal causes of the immediate degen- 
eracy of the Persians before the death of Cyrus, and, 
the last having given a final polish to the wretched 
character of the Greeks by the conquests of Alexander, 
an aggregation of the vices of these three powers was, 
by the senseless course of Rome, to be concentrated 
upon its people, and shall it be said, what the Romans 
thought it to be, for their glory? when every student 
knows, that this conquest of Asia and G-recia by Rome 
added another ingredient poison to the life of the 
republic and to the vital happiness of its people. And 
thus by her conquests Rome became the receptacle of 
all the evil that was known and practiced in a world 
which had already fallen by its own corruption, and, 
in this western capital, the infectious elements began 
the work of death, and that decomposition of those 
moral powers which had heavily marked its pathway 
among the inhabitants of the east and the south. It 
was after the propensities had been elevated to a 
position of supremacy over the moral, after the bare 
predominant influence which the latter had previousLy 
held over the former, had been entirely shaken and 
cast to a lower and subordinate condition to the 
animal faculties, that the latter became permanent 
and generative, supplying themselves with those other 
external agencies which, although not necessary to 
complete the desolation of the internal world, would 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 399 

be required to more rapidly forward the expunction 
of the moral faculties from the mental powers of the 
Romans. 

Political organizations being but the effects of the 
mental powers, it follows that the great variety of civil 
governments is a perfect denotation of the conditions 
in which the mind has been formed in different coun- 
tries. Democratic and republican governments spring 
from those faculties of the mind which produce acts 
of justice in the external world. Monarchial and 
aristocratical ones arise from purely selfish feelings, 
are enforced by the same authority, having no other 
basis upon which to repose their security than the 
power of the sword, and no other claims to existence 
than that which "might makes right." 

The principles of the centralized and despotic gov- 
ernments of the Orients, as well as their general 
systematic depravity, were cherished and finally 
absorbed by the Romans as desirable ends to satisfy 
the selfishness of their fallen nature. Love of self 
throughout the republic, with the fall of the moral, 
had triumphed over that of country, f Those feelings 
which form attachment to places of nativity, had rel- 
atively become weaker, and as the empire took the 



' + About the age of Christ, contemplating the vices of the people, Livy 
observes that "Of late years, indeed, opulence has introduced a greediness of 
gain, and the boundless variety of dissolute pleasures has created in many a 
passion for ruining themselves and all around them."— Baebr's TransIiATION. 



400 HISTOBY OF THE DECLENSION". 

place of the repubKc, it is evident that sound patri- 
otism had suffered an entire overthrow in this great 
elementary conflict. All the domestic relations of the 
Romans had become lightly regarded by them before 
the usurpation of the republic, every class being 
infected by the reckless, profligate, and lecherous 
manners which prevailed among the efiete inhabitants 
of Greece, Carthage, and western Asia. The equita- 
ble pecuniary relations between man and man were 
disregarded; the natural bonds between parents and 
children were partially dissolved ; marriage vows, sin- 
cerely made at the altar, generally became annulled 
by subsequent violations; and the feeling which the 
people had formerly entertained for the welfare of the 
republic, had become second to individual interests 
and sordid ambitions. Dishonesty, instead of honesty, 
in business transactions ; disobedience, instead of 
obedience, to lawful authority; infidelity, instead of 
fidelity, to the marital contract; positive cruelty, 
instead of compassion; and, in addition to these, a 
base ambition, which the people then had the doubtful 
intelligence to eulogize, forced all classes to struggle 
for those positions and that wealth which would gratify 
the vilest of their passions ; all these had become the 
predominant qualities of the Romans before the empire 
rose to power upon the ruins of the republic. It was 
under the collected, united, and concentrated action of 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 401 

all the vices that had ever been generated in Egypt, 
Greece, Carthage, and western Asia, that the mental 
faculties of the people of Rome became disarranged 
in their organized action, and deranged in the function 
of their original design. Grecian philosophy had, to 
some extent, monopolized the attention or action of 
the mentality of the higher classes, and religion had 
extended its influence over the. masses by multiplying 
the number of the gods, thus increasing the objects of 
worship. It would be somewhat strange if, among a 
people such as the Romans had become, the fashion 
of religion did not correspond to the advances of the 
age, if there would not be some change in the objects 
of religious regard to which the people bowed the knee; 
that the shrine of Venus would be better patronized 
than that of Minerva; those of Medea, Midas, and 
Mercury, than those of Astrsea, Nemesis, and iEacus. 

Much has been written by historians upon the 
crimes and vices of the emperors of Rome, and by 
making their names prominent in depravity, the con- 
dition of the masses is entirely overlooked by the 
reader, or, if thought of at all, they are supposed 
to be victims to the cruelty of centralized power. 
The turpitude of the imperial monsters was but a 
spontaneous outgrowth of the general corruption 
which existed in the nation. 

Having established the fall of the moral powers 

26 



402 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

among the inhabitants of Rome, and, as every student 
of history well knows that the mental faculties of the 
Europeans continued in the same moral darkness, 
notwithstanding the efforts of Christianity, down to 
and during the middle ages, it remains, as has been 
observed, to draw some conclusions with reference to 
man's mental condition. This may enable us, wlien 
the history of the United States is reached, to compre- 
hend the manner in which he has been treated in the 
past, and what reliance, in his present condition, can 
be placed upon his course in the future. 

For many years the author of these pages, while 
reading ancient and modern history, was affected to 
sadness and mortification at the wickedness which the 
race has manifested in every age and nation. Feel- 
ings, too, of more lasting consequences than those of 
sorrow have dropped the records of man' s past career 
from perusal, leaving oppressions which were sure to 
be repeated upon the resumption of the course. These 
soon led to the enquiry, was man, in the beginning, 
predisposed to that depravity and those miseries to 
which his own depositions bear testimony? Having 
given a negative answer in the first part of this 
chapter, we invite the reader to a serious and can- 
did investigation into that condition in which man 
appears to be, and put the dependent and final ques- 
tion, is this condition one of insanity ? 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 403 

And first it is necessary to nnderstand the meaning 
of tlie term insanity. Of this we may be aided by a 
comprehension of its antithetical one, sanity. Web- 
ster defines this latter term as a "condition or quality 
of being sane; soundness or healthiness of body or 
mind, especially the latt<'r," Again, he says of its 
adjective sane, "In a sound condition; not disordered 
or shattered ; especially not disordered in intellect ; in 
one's right mind, or of sound reason ; sound, healthy, 
imderanged.''^ Therefore insanity must be defined, 
according to Webster, as being "a quality or condi- 
tion" of unsoundness or unhealthiness of body or 
mind, "especially the latter." And of its adjective 
we may say, in unsound condition, disordered or 
shattered. And again of the term derangement 
(used nowadays as synonymous with insanity), as 
a substantive, meaning an "act of deranging, or 
state of being deranged; disordered, especially men- 
tal disorder; insanity, disarrangement, confusion, 
embarrassment, irregularity, disturbance, lunacy, 
madness, delirium, mania; see insanity."'' Insanity 
is defined by him as a state of "unsoundness of mind, 
derangement of intellect; lunacy, madness, derange- 
ment, alienation, aberration, mania, delirium, frenzy, 

6 Webster's National Pictorial Dictionary, pages 637 and 638, the 
word "intellectual" by Webster, being general and meaning mental, applies. 
to the whole mental powers. 

7 Ibid., page 195. 



404 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

monomania, dementia. Insanity is the generic term 
for all sucli diseases ; lunacy has now an equal extent 
of meaning, though once used to denote periodical 
insanity; madness has the same extent, though orig- 
inally referring to the rage created by the disease; 
derangement, aberration, alienation, are popular terms 
for insanity ; delirium, mania and frenzy denote excited 
states of the disease." ^ These are the definitions 
given by Webster, and are very near correctly 
abridged from the best standard works on the sub- 
ject from the old school. Yet it is our duty to rely on 
the definitions of those mostly who have made insan- 
ity a life-long study, and combine with experimental 
knowledge a thorough understanding of the mental 
powers. By this method we would be better enabled 
to reach truth and reason. It is, therefore, thought 
best by us to give Dr. Spurzheim's definition nearly 
in full, it corresponding better with the advance of 
philosophy and science than any work of the kind 
with which we are acquainted. It is as follows: 
"Insanity deprives an individual of the rights of 
society, and often involves property, conjugal and 
other relations; it is subject to various inconven- 
iences of the greatest consequence, which certainly 
are sufficient motives to examine it with more accu- 
racy than hitherto has been done. Insanity might be 

8 Webster's National Pictorial Dictionaby, page 385. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 405 

defined an aberration of the manifestations of the mind 
from their state of health; that definition, however, 
could have a determinate meaning only for those who 
have a previous knowledge of the operations of the 
mind in a healthy state. Artificial signs and ideas, 
definition and knowledge, are in the most intimate 
relation. Where information is deficient, nomencla- 
ture will be vague; where there is no exact knowl- 
edge of the nature and properties of anything to be 
described, an exact definition is impossible. 

"Various definitions of insanity have been given; 
all are founded upon the opinions of the schools with 
respect to the mind, its properties and the conditions 
of its manifestations. In the introduction, we have 
mentioned that no branch of medicine is so intimately 
connected with the philosophy of the human mind as 
insanity. Mr. Haslam says, 'The difBculty of pro- 
posing a satisfactory theory of the human mind must 
have been felt by every person who has touched this 
delicate string since the days of Aristotle.' * * * 
It is, therefore, not astonishing that the knowledge 
of the derangement of the mind is so little under- 
stood. * * * * 

"As, in the prevailing philosophical opinions of the 
schools, the activity of the mind was looked for in 
the intellectual powers, as, according to an axiom, its 
whole activity began with sensation, so that there was 



406 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

nothing in tlie mind which did not come into it by 
the senses, it was very natural to think always of 
the intellectual powers if derangements of the mind 
were spoken of. Moreover, the intellectual derange- 
ments are the most obvious. It is, for instance, easily 
observed, if any reject what is excellent, hate what is 
useful, fear when there is no reason to fear, suppose 
perceptions of external impressions which do not 
exist, etc. 

"Among the derangements of the mind, memory, 
judgment and imagination were particularly attended 
to, and for a long time it was believed that deranged 
judgment is the basis of insanity. It is true, that as 
long as judgment exists and corrects erroneous percep- 
tions, the morbid afiections of the five senses are not 
considered as insanity. The mind, for instance, may 
be deprived of voluntary motion, or of any other 
sense ; the senses may be morbidly affected ; we may 
feel burning heat on the skin; may see flames, the 
external objects double, reversed, or red colored; we 
may hear noise, perceive various odors or savors ; as 
long as we know the incorrectness of our perceptions, 
such diseases are not called insanity : but a patient is 
styled insane, if he believe in such perceptions from 
external impressions which do not exist. He, for 
instance, who thinks he has a frog in his stomach, or 
that he has feet of glass or straw, will be called insane. 



GENEEAL INTEODITCTION. 407 

"At the present time, it is well ascertained that, in 
insanity, the power of judging is not always deranged. 
Many insane persons, if we grant their premises, rea- 
son with perfect consistency ; nay, in many that power 
is increased. For that reason, one sort of insanity is 
designated by the name reasoning foolishness {follie 
raisonnante). This truth might be illustrated by 
many cases ; but it is superfluous to mention them, 
since every one who takes care of insane persons must 
have had occasion to make observations of tliat kind. 
I shall only extract from Dr. Cox' s work on insanity 
that passage where he refers to a part of the speech of 
Lord Erksine, when at the bar, in defense of Hadfield. 
'I remember,' said the advocate, 'the case of a man 
who indicted another for imprisoning him; and in 
the course of the trial, though I endeavored by every 
means in my power, by every question I could put, to 
draw from him some proof of the real state of his mind, 
yet such was his subtilty and such his caution, that 
he baffled me at every point ; and it was only by Dr. 
Sims' appearing in court that he discovered himself; 
for he no sooner saw the doctor than he addressed him 
as the Lord and Saviour of mankind. The person 
indicted was, therefore, acquitted. But such was the 
Gubtilty and perseverance of this man, that, recollect- 
ing that the doctor had one day confined him in his 
hous3 in town, he indicted him for the same offense, 



408 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

and SO well did he remember what it was that lost 
him his cause at Middlesex, that nothing could 
extort from him the same behavior; and yet there 
was not the smallest doubt in the mind of any one 
who knew him, that he was really and truly a luna- 
tic' I have chosen this sample as a proof, that such 
cases do not fall within the observation of medical 
practitioners only. 

"Sometimes it happens that the manifestations of 
all intellectual powers, as perception, memory, judg- 
ment and imagination, are perfect, nay, improved, 
while, however, the patients are decidedlv insane. At 
Vienna, a melancholy person having seen the execu- 
tion of a criminal, the spectacle produced in him so 
violent an emotion, that he was seized with a pro- 
pensity to kill. At the same time, he had clear 
consciousness of his situation, and preserved the 
strongest aversion to such a crime. Weeping bit- 
terly, he described his deplorable situation with an 
extreme confusion; he struck his head, wrung his 
hands, exhorted himself, and cried to his friends to 
take care, and to fly ; and he thanked them if they 
resisted and menaced him. Pinel speaks of a mad- 
man who did not show any mark of alienation in 
respect to memory, imagination, and judgment, but 
who confessed that in his narrow seclusion his pro- 
pensity to murder was quite involuntary, and that his 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 409 

wife, notwithstanding his tenderness for her, was near 
being Immolated, lie having time only to warn hei to 
fly. In Ms lucid intervals, he made the same melan- 
choly reflections, he expressed the same remorse, and 
he was disgusted with life to such a degree, that he 
several times attempted to put an end to its existence. 
* * * Hence there can be no doubt that insanity 
embraces more than the derangement of the intel- 
lectual powers. 

"With respect to the morbid affections of the senses, 
and to the errors of the intellectual powers, we are 
insane, if we cannot distinguish the diseased functions, 
and do consider them as regular ; and in the derange- 
ment of any feeling we are insane, either if we cannot 
distinguish the disordered feeling, if, for instance, we 
really think we are an emperor, king, minister, gen- 
eral, etc., or if we distinguish the deranged feeling, 
but have lost the influence of the will on our actions, 
for instance, in the morbid activity of the propensity 
to destroy. Thus, insanity, in my opinion, is an 
aberration of ^ny sensation or intellectual power from 
the healthy state, without being able to distinguish 
the diseased state ; and the aberration of any feeling 
from the state of health, without being able to dis- 
tinguisli it, or without the influence of the will on the 
actions of the feelings. In other words, the inca- 
pacity of distinguishing the diseased functions of the 



410 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

mind, and the irresistibility of our actions, constitute 
insanity."^ 

Here we have a definition which is not so unconfined 
by its extended comprehension as to be rendered 
nugatory in meaning, and sufficiently broad to 
embrace within its scope every phase of the disease. 
In the above we are informed that when any one of 
the faculties of the mind is deranged (changed) in its 
function (peculiar or appointed action) it is under- 
stood, by those devoted to this branch of learning, to 
place the person to whom it belongs in a condition of 
insanity. ^° Then if a faculty do not act in that 
sphere which was designed by nature, but does in 
some other, the mind including it is deranged. ^ * Or 
if there be a disarrangement in the order of the 
faculties, so that those which were designed, in the 
beginning, to be subjected to the influence of the moral, 
become emancipated, or rather ejected from the lat- 
ter' s subservienc}-, then the mind, in that condition, 
is deranged; because, first, there is a change in the 
function of the moral and subservient faculties ; and 

9 See his work on insanity, first American edition, ch. 2, pages 49, 50, 
51, 63 and 5:5. 

10 The term insanity is probably derived from the Latin word, insanitas, 
meaning unhealthiness or unsoundness of the mind's action ; and the latter 
was used by the Roman writers in the same sense which we now apply to the 
former.— See Anthon's Latin-English and English-Latin Dictionart, 
page 448. 

11 It must have been observed that derangement is frequently caused 
by disarrangement. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 411 

second, in the tendency and bent of the whole mind. 
In such disarrangement of the faculties the mind is 
entirely deprived of the ostensible object of its crea- 
tion, misdirected and deranged in nearly all the 
appointed actions to which it was designed to be 
applied. A single faculty becoming deranged, or 
changed in its peculiar function or appointed action, 
effects, more or less, a derangement of the whole 
mind, but in proportion to its primitive quality and 
original harmonious relation to the rest of the facul- 
ties. ^~ When, however, several faculties become so 
situated, the general effect upon the tendency of the 
mind is increased or multiplied, not in exact propor- 
tion to their number, but in due correspondence with 
their numerical quantity and the relative position 



12 The derangement of a single faculty gives rise to that condition of 
insanity which is known by the name of Monomania, the latter being defined 
by Webster as a " Derangement of a single faculty of the mind, orwith regard 
to a particular subject only." Wharton, in his Medical Jurisprudence, 
relates a case to illustrate the character of this disease, in which, during 
the investigaton, the Court entered into a long conversation upon various 
topics with a subject of the disease. The subject was a man of thought as 
well as of learning, and, if we may believe the report, discovered greater 
reason, a more careful study and reflection on the various branches to which 
his attention had been directed, than the Court. Thereupon the Court, 
surprised at the turpitude of those who desired an application for his com- 
mitment to an asylum, turned to them and said: "This man mad, verily, he 
is the ablest man I ever met with " At this development of the case, the 
friends of the afflicted slipped a piece of paper upon the bench on which 
was written the name, Ezekiel. The Court then began a very careful criticism 
of the various writers of the Old Testament, in nearly consecutive order, 
until he spoke Ezekiel. The lunatic then asked him if he liked the writings 
of Ezekiel, to which the Court replied in the affirmative. " Well," said the 
madman, "I will tell you a secret, I am Ezekiel." 



413 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

which they occupy, and the positive influence which 
they severally have.*^ 

The efiect produced by excessive fear, recurring- 
in periods or continuous in action, casts a veil over 
the feelings, and, as every person well knows who 
is at all acquainted with the subject, frequently results 
in a derangement of the affective powers. There 
is constantly a large proportion of those who are 
confined in asylums afflicted with that peculiar disease 
of the mind known as Melancholia. But an excessive 
greed for the possession of whatever is of value in 
the material world, when the faculty which gives 
rise to this state deprives all the modifying faculties 
of their influence over the action of this one, is as 
certainly a derangement of the mind as any of those 
diseases of which persons, placed over the insane, 
have had the opportunity to observe and to treat. 

If a faculty of the mind, having a particular action 
and not a general scope, be diminished in quantity, 
but not in quality, from a normal condition, then the 
case does not necessarily constitute insanity, but does 
constitute a loss of power in that faculty. Although 



13 The following, from Benjamin Uush, M. D., illustrates this peculiar 
condition : " Persons who are aflBicted with it (Dissociation) are good tem- 
pered and quarrelsome, malicious and kind, generous and miserly, all in 
the course of the same day- In a word, the mind, in this disease, may De 
considered as floating in a baloon, and at the mercy of every object and 
thought that acts upon It. It is constant in some people, but occurs in 
paroxysms, and is sometimes succeeded by low spirits." — Diseases op the 
Mind, page 258. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 413 

this may affect the whole mind, it does not necessarily 
derange the action of those moral faculties in which, in 
a moral person, the will may be said to be reposed. 
The mind is made up of an aggregation, not of nega- 
tive, but of positive primitive powers. Although one of 
these powers, if it have only a particular function, suffer 
decrement and this be understood as nothing else but 
a diminishment of that weight formerly characteristic 
of it in primitive normality, it may nevertheless give 
rise, under certain external influences, to a different 
general active direction of the whole mind, and still 
not constitute that mental condition known as insanity. 
Thus, during moments of great danger, the element of 
fear may be more active than that of courage, giving 
its corresponding quality to individual conduct. And 
in like manner, when the latter possesses greater 
potency than the former, temerity is the result. 
Although, under the two circumstances, the moral 
faculties be not properly supported, they are, notwith- 
standing, strongly active in themselves, failing only in 
forming such combinations in their support as would 
carry out their inherent impressions. But these con- 
ditions which exist, with a maintenance of sanity, are 
limited and confined in action with, and counter action 
to, the moral, to a very few propensities. For a much 
greater development in some of the animal faculties 
than that, which is possessed by the moral, would 



414 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

give them such pervertive prominence over the latter 
as to be productive of different outward expressions 
than that to which they were originally adapted, A 
feeling which, not infrequently existing, some people 
have for the commission of murder to satisfy a per- 
verted faculty, overcomes the active influence of the 
primitive elements of justic(^ and compassion. A 
case of this kind would not only be considered one 
of insanity, but of madness also, by those who have 
devoted much attention to the subject,^* Again, if 



14 See the Vienna case quoted in definition given by Spurzheim where he- 
says, "I have quoted more examples in my work on Phrenology," which is 
here reproduced in the following . " HighwajTnen are frequently not content 
with robbing, but manifest the most sanguinary inclination to torment and 
murder, without necessity. John Rosbede not only maltreated his victims to 
make them showtheir concealed treasures, but invented and employed the most 
outrageous cruelties, merely to witness their sufferings ; neither fear nor torture 
could break him of this horrible habit ; after his first apprehension, he was 
confined for eighteen months in a small subterranean dungeon, his feet loaded 
with chains, standing in muddy water up to his ankles; in addition to all this, 
hewas tortured most cruelly. * * * On being enlarged, his first act was 
to steal in full daylight, and having committed new murders, was finally 
executed. 

' At the beginning of the last century, several murders were committed 
in Holland, on the frontiers of the province of Cleves. For a long time the 
murderer escaped detection, but at last suspicion fell on an old man, who 
gained his livelihood by playing on the violin at country weddings, in con- 
sequence of some expressions of his children? led before the justice, he- 
confessed thirty-four murders, and said that he had committed them without 
any cause of enmity, and without any intention of robbing, but only because 
he was extremely delighted with bloodshed. At Strasburg, two keepers of 
the cathedral having been assassinated, all efforts to discover the murderer 
for a lon^' time were ineffectual: at last a postilion was shot by a clergyman 
called Frick. This monster had hired a post-chaise for the express purpose 
of satisfying his horrible propensity to destroy. Arrested, he confessed him- 
self the murderer of both keepers of the cathedral. This wretch was rich, 
and had never stolen. For his crimes he was condemned to be burned at . 
Strasburg. Louis XV,' says M. de Lacretelle, ' felt a rooted aversion against 
a brother of the Duke of Bourbon Conde, Count Charlois, who would have::' 



GENERAL INTKODUCTION. 415 

the moral faculties have so entirely fallen as to give 
the propensities directive power over the individual, 
it is at least a certain grade of madness, however 
much the intellectual faculties may be able to dis- 
tinguish those diseased coiiditions under which the 
mind labors. Such is not necessarily a derangement 
of the last, but is of the first. 

In the contemplation of this question, if the con- 
duct of mankind be taken into consideration, with 
such definitions as are given by the most experienced 
writers on the subject of insanity, (they are based 
upon observed facts, too,) it will be found that but 
a small portion of the human family can escape some 
sort of classification under the disease. By a close 



renewed all the crimes of Nero, had he ever mounted a throne. While a child, 
he betrayed a cruelty of disposition which excited horror. He delighted in 
shedding the blood of those he had debauched, and in exercising various 
barbarities on the courtezans who were brought to him. Popular tradition, 
as well as history, accuse him of different homicides, and it is added that 
these were committed without any cause, and when unnerved by anger; for 
he shot at slaters, merely to have the barbarous pleasure of seeing them fall 
from the tops of the houses.' 

" These latter facts, which fortunately for humanity are very rare, prove 
that this terrible propensity is sometimes quite independent of education, of 
example, or of habit, and that it depends on innate constitution alone. Many 
crimes Indeed are as detestable, and are accompanied with such repugnant 
and horrible circumstances, that it would be impossible to explain them in 
any other way. Prochasca relates that a woman of Milan caressed little chil- 
dren, led them home, killed them, salted their flesh, and ate of it every day. 
He quotes also the case of a person whom this passion excited, and who liilled 
a traveler and a young girl to eat them. Canbius speaks of a girl whose father 
was incited by a violent Impulse to eat human flesh, and who, to gratify his 
singular desire, committed several murders. This girl, though separated from 
her father for a long time, and educated carefully among respectable people 
not related to her family, was overcome by the same horrible desire to eat 
human flesh."— Sfubzhsiu's PHRENOiiOGT, pages 141, 142 and 143. 



416 HISTOKY OF THE DEOLENSION". 

and careful investigation into the conduct of people 
one will find that all ranks and vocations are more 
tinctured with those abnormal mental conditions which 
are now, and ever have been, characteristic of the 
various degrees of madness, than he could, at first, 
have been led to suppose. By this method alone one 
can discover the lamentable condition of the internal 
causes of those external acts, against both of which 
man has been forced to labor, in the major part of 
the earth and a greater part of the time, for more 
than fifty centuries. If we see individuals kill them- 
selves intentionally ; if they kill others for the purpose 
of bringing the penalty of death upon themselves, 
by execution of law, to avoid self-murder; if they 
murder their wives or children, or vice versa ; if they 
are so enchanted by gold as to become slaves to the 
tedious processes of its accumulation while they are 
surrounded by opulence ; if they directly or indirectly 
defraud others for the purpose of multiplying fortunes 
already large ; if we should find man so intoxicated 
with the love of fame as to trample upon every natural 
law, finally extinguishing the best portions of his 
being and the only substantial happiness of his life, 
to subserve the ends of a weak, a delusive and an 
imaginary glory, existing in the mind of himself and 
his base parasites only, when he must inevitably be 
looked upon with contempt for his depravity and 



GENERAL INTEODUOTION. 417 

imbecility by the wise and just of his, and of those of 
succeeding generations; if he so conduct his career 
as to defeat the object which he sought and plunge 
himself into misery, we are constrained to pronounce 
him either fatuous or lunatic, which, in either event, 
places him under the general term of insanity. If 
he connive at all kinds of hypocrisy and dishonesty 
to gain an election which, when attained, adds nothing 
to his happiness, little good to his name, but is fleet- 
ing, is passing away, and terminates in disappointment 
to his senseless hopes ; if he have an idea measured 
only by weight of gold, as a consideration upon 
which he bases those marital relations which are 
sure to meet that merited disaster that the least intel- 
ligence might have foreseen ; if he so conduct his 
business in the acquisition of property that whatever 
little morality he possessed at his birth and majority 
are extinguished at his death ; if he acquire property 
for the purpose of giving a bridleless license to his 
passions ; if he reduce others to indigence to enrich 
and aggrandize his own family, not appreciating the 
consequences which the heinous process will have 
to brutalize himself, or unable to comprehend its 
effects when completed, he is, we say, a lunatic, and 
requires rather the watchful care of a doctor of 
philosophy than one of medicine. 

An ambition arising from the propensities, or from 

27 



418 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the selfisli sentiments, so much exalted in the past 
and present, when it subordinates the moral to this 
one end, however lightly regarded, is a condition of 
insanity. It is also one of the highest degrees of 
absurdity to which conceit can be carried, to suppose 
that there can be a general progressive improvement 
to man' s advantage, because the intellectual faculties 
are manifesting an active development in discoveries 
and inventions, while the moral, at the same time, 
are in a state of great degeneracy. This, if it did not 
originate with the ignorant, did with that class which 
have utterly failed to comprehend the extent to which 
man' s mind was organized, and to which again it may 
be developed. A development of the intellectual, 
without a corresponding one of the moral, faculties, 
only multiplies the power, and consequently the 
extent of human depravity.^'' Depravity and crime 
are results of those mental conditions of which derange- 
ment was the cause. Man is still in that condition in 
which he has existed for at least four thousand years, 
Tinder the reign of the animal faculties and selfish 
sentiments of the mind. 

IS There are more colleges in the state of Ohio, which have this scope, 
than there are in England, France and Germany combined. In no part of the 
earth is there an institution of learning which educates other faculties than 
the religious and the intellectual. Text-books there are, it is true, on moral 
science, but they are almost wholly religiousin their nature ; students, there- 
fore, come from college with an education of the religious and intellectual 
only. Thus Ohio, under the present system of education, is a great moral 
disorganizer, and becomes a standing menace to the freedom of the people 
and the perpetuity of the republic. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 41d 

If we behold man one day acting within the bounds 
of reason, and on a subsequent one suddenly exalted 
to a degree of impudence, for instance, in consequence 
of the possession of a fortune, when by it he is not 
made the better, nor the wiser, but only rendered the 
more comfortable, and begins to despise his fellow 
men more fortunate, who are his superiors in internal 
qualities, and tramples upon their vested rights to 
satisfy his arrogance and flatter the immediate cause 
of his vanity, we are forced, by the nature of the 
case, to allege that he is shaken in his reason and 
deranged in his morals. If, as a public functionary, 
we see him one day courting peace, and for this end 
exhausting all the arts of a deceitful diplomacy, but 
on another plunging his country into a deadly conflict 
of arms, which must invariably dig the graves and 
perform funeral rites over the mortal remains of thou- 
sands of human beings, because he is possessed of 
sufficient power to revenge his nationality upon an 
enemy for some stupid error of the latter, we say 
that he and the people who support his measures 
have given evidence of a derangement of their moral 
faculties. Although in the latter case the intellectual 
powers may not be deranged, they have, as it were 
changed masters, have become agents and servants of 
the propensities, there being a disarrangement in the 
natural order of the faculties by their permutation. 



420 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

The intellectual powers, in snch a condition, are 
controlled and directed by those faculties which, 
when perverted, give rise to th^ irrational feelings 
of malice, hatred and revenge. When men make 
statutory laws which are designed, in their nature, to 
prevent the recurrence of crime by the punishment of 
those who violate them, and then substantially per- 
form what they endeavored to forestall, escaping 
punishment because, by a little sagacity, their offense 
was so committed as to be too narrow or too broad 
for the particular misdemeanor described in the code, 
we charge them with both sanity and insanity, corre- 
sponding to the two contradictory positions of their 
mental powers at the time of the conception and exe- 
cution of both law and transgression. They were 
possessed of reason when they made the law, because 
their reasoning faculties were properly directed; but 
though not divested of some appearance of reason, 
as considered in and of itself, when they violated it, 
yet there was a derangement in the manner in which 
its qualities were used. ■■ ^ 

i6 The many cases we have put forward in the above more clearly consti- 
tute insanity than the following one quoted from Dr. Benjamin Rush, on the 
same subject, by which case he labors to demonstrate to the reader the 
appearances which a person afflicted with demence or dissociation usually 
presents: "The celebrated Lavater was afflicted with it, and although he 
wrote with order, yet his conversation was a mass of unconnected ideas, 
accompanied with bodily gestures, which indicated a degree of madness. I 
shall insert an account of a visit paid to him at Zurich by the Rev. Dr. Hunter, 
an English clergyman, in which he exemplified the state which I wish to 
describe : 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 421 

Again, if individuals pursue, follow or endorse 
those public customs which, by their nature, tend 
directly to the diminishment of those mental causes 
which are productive of compassion and of justice, 
when the same come within the range or scope of 
the intellectual powers of a person of ordinary mind, 
and fail to comprehend the effects of the terrible opera- 
tion, such individuals, we say, are deranged in the 
reasoning powers of the mind. If, on the other hand, 
their intellectual faculties take full scope of the given 
operations from first to last, in all their bearings, and 
do not oppose the tidal current of corruption, or at 
least stand aloof from it, then the case becomes a 
derangement of the moral faculties of the mind. 
Because when the current of public thought, in any 
age or among any people, tends to destroy, by its 
final effects, the health, comfort and happiness of 



" ' I was detained,' says he, ' the whole morning by the strango, wild, 
eccentric Lavater, in various conversations. When once he is set agoing there 
is no such thing as stopping him till he runs himself out of breath. He starts 
from subject to subject ; flies from book to book, from picture to picture ; 
measures your nose, your eyo, your mouth, with a pair of compasses; pours 
forth a torrent of physiognomy upon you ; drags you, for a proof of his dogma, 
to a dozen closets, and unfolds ten thousand drawings ; but will not let you 
open your mouth to propose a difficulty ; crams a solution down your throat 
before you have uttered half a syllable of your objection. 

" * Ho is as meager as the picture c)f famine ; his nose and chin almost 
meet. I read him in my turn, and found little difficulty in discovering, amidst 
great genius, unaffected piety, unbounded benevolence and moderate learn- 
ing, much caprice and unsteadiness, a mind at once aspiring by nature 
and groveling through necessity, an endless turn to speculation and project ; 
In a word, a clever, flighty, good-natured, necessitous man.' "— Diseases of 
THK Mind, flfth edition, page 258. 



422 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

mankind through the diminishment of their causes 
in the human mind, the embracement or endorsement 
of, or acquiescence to, that public thought or custom, 
becomes an act of suicide and hence irrational. It is, 
we repeat, only by the external acts of persons that 
we become acquainted with their internal condition. 
To conclude: if we should discover that the human 
family, or any considerable portion of them, be irre- 
sistibly driven by those passions or desires of which 
we find them possessed, to the embracement of those 
wrongs which, as such, are easily comprehended by 
their understandings, we say that it constitutes a case 
of derangement of the moral faculties, because the 
latter are put out of their natural order, and no longer 
perform their proper functions : those faculties having 
a general scope no longer subordinate and direct those 
which have a particular action only, the last having 
become first. This is necessarily the case with all 
monomaniacs, and many mad people suffering from 
general derangement that are confined in lunatic asy- 
lums. A part of the modifying faculties are so far 
lost to power over the mind that some of those pro- 
pensities which have prodigious activity, not being 
counterbalanced, render the subject highly dangerous 
to the members of society. 

The irrational condition in which man has existed 
for above five thousand years, in our opinion, accounts 



GETTERAL TNTRODTTCTION. 423 

for the fact, that the days of every nation are num- 
bered, and that, sooner or later, it must follow the fate 
of its predecessor. That "history repeats itself," is 
almost as true as trite. ^ ' It is an easy matter to deter- 
mine that people afflicted with melancholy insanity, 
during the worst periods of the disease, will be very 
liable to commit homicide. It is also as easy to pre- 
dict, as experience has proven, that every twenty 
years, other conditions being equal, there will be 
financial crises throughout all commercial nations. 
But these and other similar calculations of statis- 
ticians, are only predicable under the reign of the 
propensities. They could not occur if man should be 
returned to a normal condition. 

Having seen, in the histories of the primitive 
religious and moral elements of the Hebrews and 
Carthaginians, of the intellectual and moral powers 
of the Greeks, the disproof of an ecclesiastical error, 
and, a popular notion, long entertained by educators, 
to be equally erroneous, we, in addition to these, dis- 
covered that a general depravity had, before the birth 
of our Saviour, an almost universal existence among 
all civilized nations, and had also extended its blight- 
ing curse to the savages and barbarians who inhabited 
the remote comers of the earth. In addition to other 
leading objects in the foregoing histories, we say, that 



17 John S. Mnx's Logic of thi: Moral Sciencss, ch. 10. 



424 HISTORY OP THE DECLEl^fSION. 

a general depravity was shown to liave an almost 
univeral existence; all tribes, races, and nations of 
mankind having fallen under the domination of the 
propensities. In this chapter it has been one of onr 
leading desires to make a closer examination into that 
mental disease under which man still labors, and to 
which we had, in the former chapters, applied the term 
depravity. In this chapter we have also endeavored to 
prove that the primitive condition of man consisted in 
the supremacy of his moral sentiments, and subse- 
quently, the antithetical one with which he is now 
afflicted, to be a derangenent of his mental powers. 

Our attention has been brought to the mental condi- 
tion in which, for several thousand years, man has 
been placed. We have seen that although man is 
religious, he is, nevertheless, in consequence of his 
tenacious vices, a melancholy and disgusting being to 
behold. Religion, instead of elevating him morally, 
has been one of the chief causes of plunging him into 
crime and debauchery, not in consequence of its 
having such tendency in and of itself, but because of 
the broad and unwarrantable efficacy assumed of it by 
its apostles. So far as its final effects are concerned, 
in ministering to the wants of our spiritual nature, it is 
just, glorious and true. Farther than this, nothing 
can be claimed for it. By an increased culture of the 
reasoning powers, we find a parallel multiplication, 



GENEEAL INTRODUCTION. 425 

not of virtue, as is supposed, but of vice, its antagon- 
istic element. These claims put forward by the sacer- 
docy as a qualitative effect of the former, is almost 
as old as religion itself; but that of the learned is 
of more recent origin. These scholastic and ecclesias- 
tical opinions are still taught in the United States with 
all the fervor and confidence which might be expected 
of the times under the present notion of human pro- 
gress. If they, or either of them, had protected man in 
the past, or had they exhibited such tendency, we 
might indulge some hope that they would arrest the 
progress of corruption in the present. But we know, 
by having seen, that they have no such tendency, and 
the more confidence we place in their efficacy, the 
surer and more rapid will be the blast of our faith. 
Let us, therefore, be awakened from farther reliance 
in their pretended preserving powers, and understand 
the benefits and evils which, in the United States, are 
derivable from each. 

Mankind was degenerated before the founding of 
Rome, and degenerated with it while it had control of 
the earth. After the fall of the empire, the European 
races were in a deplorable condition of morals, and so 
continued down to the reformation, during which, in 
the British isles, causes so combined as to produce a 
partial restoration. This degeneracy was a derange- 
ment of the moral sentiments. Whatever restoration 



426 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

there was, it was inherited by the pioneers of the thir- 
teen colonies, and, by causes which arose through the 
maladministration of parliament and the executive of 
Great Britain, continued to progress in them farther 
toward a status of normality. But, as time added to 
the age of the republic, as wealth was accumulated, 
generations multiplied, education increased, and relig- 
ion become more popular with the masses, the people, 
as we shall hereafter show, relapsed back into that 
disease of the moral sentiments which is so traceable 
in the dark and gloomy history of man. 

Having given, at the close of the preceding chapter, 
some hints by which this derangement can be removed, 
and that no equitable government can possibly endure 
without its removal, we shall proceed, in the follow- 
ing chapter, to treat of the events which mark, more 
immediately, the rapid declension of morals in the 
United States of Am.erica. 



1 



CHAPTER yn. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION". 

No Declension without a. status exists from which a Nation can 
decline — Partial recovery to a primitive state by Settlers of North 
America— Causes which contributed to produce that recovery — 
Evidences of that partial Restoration in the People of the Thirteen 
Colonies at the period of the American Revolution — Change of 
Character in their immediate Successors — Contrast of the latter to 
the former — Attitude of the Southern Slave States on the question 
of Slavery— Decline of the Moral Sentiments in the South— Opin- 
ions and Feelings of Southern Slaveholders enter the North and 
stifle the Expressions of Humanity — Decline of the Moral Senti- 
ments in the North. 

The declension of a country cannot, with beneficial 
results, be contemplated apart from those conditions 
which existed at the time of the founding of the polit- 
ical body. Human society being dynamical, there is 
at one and the same time, progression and retrogres- 
sion. While some of the qualities and interests, 
material or otherwise, are advancing to apparently 
enhance the pleasure, comfort, health and welfare of 
man, others frequently, not the less, but the more 
necessary, are actually passing away and disappearing 
from that society which they had previously founded 

(4 2 7) 



428 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

and composed. And perhaps there are few notions 
upon which mankind, at large, are more divided than 
npon that idea which the term prosperity represents. 
Blinded by self-interest, prejudice, passion, bigotry, 
and conceit, man is always putting such constructions 
upon the condition of the times as best suit the meas- 
ure of his speculations, best pander to false opinions, 
or uses such influences as are designed by their nature 
to flatter the vanities of a frivolous and hypocritical 
age. Such, lamentably, has been too much the conduct 
of man in all periods of the earth's history. Could 
the race profit, under existing institutions, by the 
calamities of others in the past, who were as fortunate 
and as potent, it might be made happier, healthier 
and wealthier in the future. Under those systems 
of discipline which have always been in vogue, 
nothing better could have been expected, and stUl less 
can be hoped from them as we advance in the accumu- 
lation of evil qualities Although the intellectual 
operations of man have produced different effects in 
the arts and sciences at various periods, more or less 
surrounding him with the comforts and conveniences 
of life, he has, nevertheless, invariably foundered his 
political organization in that sea which had engulphed 
the hopes and enclosed the remains of so many of his 
predecessors. 

Why marvel at the calamities of man, when the 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 429 

very tendency of that mentality which he has traduced 
works the wreck of what he seeks ? If he has suffered, 
he has deserved to suffer; he has only met those 
rewards which Providence has seen proper to admin- 
ister, under the natural laws, to those who violate them. 
He should have prospered, as their design is protec- 
tion ; but whenever he has placed himself in opposition 
to them, he and his institutions have invariably been 
swept away. This, under similar conduct, must be 
his fate in the future. Whether this is to be the lot 
of the Great Republic of the United States, can only 
be known by the sad experience of some after the 
misfortune has transpired, by the prudence and knowl- 
edge which others have of the history of past nations, 
and the wisdom with which they apply that knowledge 
to causes which produce human events. Although the 
Declension of the Great Republic is a melancholy 
subject for a patriotic and intelligent American to 
contemplate, yet it is not as blasting in its effects as 
will be the nature of the case when the political 
fabric shall have been laid in the dust. A knowledge 
of the question, and a proper application of right 
remedies, may avoid those calamities which otherwise 
are sure to arrive. 

Of those races and classes of men and women who 
settled North America, it is generally known that they 



430 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

■were of English and Scottish origin. Although of two 
of the most warlike races of Europe, they were, 
nevertheless, more fully possessed of the mental qual- 
ities of independence, of compassion, and of justice, 
than any other nation hitherto existing in modern 
times. Notwithstanding, at the expatriation of our 
progenitors, the Europeans generally had made no 
very considerable advancement in the improvement of 
their higher mental powers, there was, at the time of 
the reformation, in the various states of that continent, 
and more especially in Scotland and England, a revival 
of that intelligence, and of those principles, which 
had, to a considerable degree, characterized the earlier 
inhabitants of Rome. The corrupt selfishness of the 
Catholic hierarchy being exposed, wakened to activ- 
ity the slumbering intelligence of those who were not 
entirely lost to sense and to shame. By investigating 
the designing cruelty and cupidity of the church, the 
feelings of justice and benevolence were brought into 
thoroughly active operations, subordinating the pro- 
pensities to the service of morality, and giving out 
indignant expressions as evidence of an aggressive 
disapproval. The result of these effects upon the 
moral faculties of the mind was to produce in them 
those active and acute conditions which, since the 
second Punic war, had been lost to Europe. As the 
long conflict between the papacy and the reformers 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 431 

increased the animosity of the contestants, these same 
primitive elements in the latter were stimulated to 
greater critical efforts, and the propensities in the mem- 
bers of the former were making as rapid progress to 
extinguish the last portion of that conscience which, 
if still left, might have been lurking in the more 
clouded recesses of the soul. The passions of envy, 
hatred and revenge, in and of themselves, never Work 
aught but evil effects to the higher sentiments of their 
possessor. WhUe the reformers were thus gaining 
moral strength in this theological controversy, by a 
resumption of a long neglected portion of their nature, 
those who adhered to the ecclesiastical notions of the 
older clergy were, by a similar process, declining in 
mental energy. From the reign of Henry VIII to the 
Prince of Orange, a period of one hundred and eighty 
years, did these conflicting questions of the church 
continue to agitate the public, and more especially the 
private, conscience of the English and Scottish races. 
The increased activity of the moral qualities which 
had in this manner been acquired by one generation, 
would very naturally, like any other, be inherited by 
the succeeding. These external causes on the one 
hand, and the internal qualities on the other, the 
latter being transmitted from parent to child and 
acting through a period of five generations, wrought 
great changes in the two principal races of the British 



432 HISTORY OF the declension. 

isles and the Catholic nations on the continent. There 
was a great superiority discernible in all the acts of 
the former over the latter. Rome taught her laity 
that faith with Protestants was not to be regarded, 
and inaugurated, as far as her influence extended, a 
weak but bloodthirsty policy against those peoples 
and nations which had emancipated themselves from 
her superstitious despotism. Not so with the reform- 
ers in England in their pastoral charges to their 
followers; for though frequently driven, through 
fear of a rising political power, to restrain the exer- 
cise of their religious beliefs and the resuscitation of 
popery, to the exercise of unwarrantable authority, it 
was under strong moral convictions. 

But when the tyrannical authority which the prim- 
acy of Rome had long exercised over the civilized 
world, was shaken from the people in this portion of 
the globe, we find that the English and Scottish minds, 
for obvious reasons, were directed to dissent from many 
trifling doctrines and immoral acts which the state and 
reformed church, under the reigns of the Tudors and 
Stuarts, had thought to be for their interest to enforce. ^ 



I The following from Hume indicates about the force with which tliey 
bore up against both state and church: "Sir John Elliott" [in the house of 
commons] " framed a remonstrance against levying tonnage and poundage 
without consent of parliament, and offered it to the clerk to read. It was 
refused. He read it himself. The question being then called for, the speaker. 
Sir John Finch, said, ' that he had a command from the king to adjourn, and 
to put no question ;' upon which he rose and left the chair. The whole house 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 433 

The people were not unnecessarily refractory against 
good government, but were restless at the impositions 
(as they supposed them to be) of their ecclesiastical 
superiors, and the tendency of those pernicious prin- 
ciples which had manifested themselves during the 
administration of their rulers. Against these the feel- 
ings of the people were aroused, and seemed disposed 
to arrest the progress of those evils which had always 
appeared to increase in strength over the common 
mind as they advanced in age. Though during this 
partial restoration, not to political rights of which 
they had been despoiled, but to the supremacy of 
their moral sentiments, the masses were not infre- 
quently urged to the extremes of justice, even 
bordering on cruelty to the person, they appeared 
upon such occasions, nevertheless, to have arrived 
at a condition by which they were caused to feel the 
poignant workings of a compassionate soul. These 



was in an uproar. The speaker was pushed back into the chair, and forcibly 
held in it by Hollis and Valentine, till a short remonstrance was framed, and 
was passed by acclamation rather than by vote. Papists and Arniinians were 
then declared capital enemies to the commonwealth. Those who levied ton- 
nage and poundage were branded with the same epithets. And even the 
merchants who shouldvoluotarily pay those duties, were denominated betray- 
ers of English liberty and public enemies. The doors" [of the commons] 
" being locked, the gentleman usher of the house of lords, who was sent by the 
king, could not get admission till this remonstrance was finished. By the 
king's order he took the mace from the table, which ended the proceedings, 
and a few days after the parliament was dissolved." * * * Of the Arminians 
he says : '* Throughout the nation they lay under the reproach of innovation 
and heresy. * * * Their protectors were stigmatized, their tenets canvassed, 
their views represented as dangerous and pernicious." — History of Eng- 
land, vol. 5, pages 56 and 59: Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston. 

28 



434 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

were symptoms whicli foreboded good, instead of evil, 
to the race of man. In tracing the events of this people 
immediately after the execution of Charles I, oppres- 
sions of mortification, grief and even horror were 
generally manifested throughout the great body of 
the English nation, which, there a century before, 
and on the continent a century afterward, could not 
have occurred under similar external circumstances. " 
Although the papacy had extinguished the fourth 
cause which operated to degenerate the Greeks, it was 
through no good will or intention of her own. She 
had checked one of the natural agencies of civilized 
corruption, as it were, and substituted in its stead the 
most savage barbarism. This condition, which she 
had wrought upon the great majority of the European 
masses, continued down to the opposition of Luther 
and Melancthon. From this mental state, which gave 

2 Speaking of the effect which the regicide had upon the more humane 
sentiments of the nation, the historian says : "In proportion to their former 
delusions, whlcIi liad animated them against him," [Charles I,] " was the vio- 
lence of their return to duty and affection ; while each reproached himself, 
either with active disloyalty towards hlra, or with too indolent defense of his 
oppressed cause. On weaker minds the effects of the complicated passions 
were prodigious. Women are said to have cast forth the untimely fruit of 
their womb ; others fell into convulsions, or sunk into such a state of melan- 
choly as attended them to their grave ; nay, some, unmindful of themselves, 
as though they could not, or would not, survive their beloved prince, it is 
reported, suddenly fell down dead. The very pulpits were bedewed with 
unsuborned tears; those pulpits which had Cormerly thundered out the most 
violent imprecations and anathemas against him. And all men united in their 
detestation of those hjiJocritical parricides who, by sanctified pretenses, had 
so long disguised their treasons, and in this last act of iniquity had thrown an 
indelible stain upon the nation."— Hume's History of ENOiiAND, vol. 5, page 
378. Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 435 

rise to no tender sentiments, but thirsted to glut a 
morbid appetite in witnessing and committing the 
most exquisite cruelties, the English and Scottish 
minds were delivered at the end of the great contro- 
versy. Thus it was that these two races were elevated, 
not in conceit and bigotry, but in substantial moral 
qualities, above the same in any other people of the 
continent, except those nations in the north of Europe 
and the south of France, which, as we have before 
intimated, had embraced the principles of the reform- 
ation. 

Having merely indicated that process and those 
agencies by which our English and Scottish progeni- 
tors were mentally carried above the moral darkness 
which obscured Europe in the middle ages, we shall 
conclude this portion of our reflection upon the sub- 
ject, as a farther extension of it would be inconsistent 
with the limits of this work. But as to their moral 
superiority, and the manner in which it was wrought, 
volumes, as evidence, can be supplied in its support. 
It is hoped that this conclusive reflection upon our 
metaphysical origin, will not be regarded as a mani- 
festation of vanity, but, by the necessities of the case, 
be conceded as truth and justice. 

However much this was the case with the English 
and Scotch, when compared with the other nations of 
the west, and more especially of the south, of Europe, 



436 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

they had, by no means, arrived at that mental status 
which placed the animal faculties and selfish senti- 
ments of the mind in entire subjection to the moral 
powers. From this metaphysical condition the pil- 
grim fathers, and those who subsequently arrived from 
these two states of the kingdom, were descended, and 
partook, as their history establishes, its qualities, 
and transmitted them to those generations which 
immediately succeeded them in the colonies of Amer- 
ica. As the English minds were not entirely under the 
influence of their moral faculties, they were engaged 
alternately in suppressing the wrongs which sprang 
up among the various classes, sects, and religious 
denominations in their own land, and, in transporting 
from the coast of Africa its inhabitants, and selling 
them as slaves to the planters of North America. 
The propensities being more active, having been more 
acted upon by objects of the external world, have 
always, since the fall of the moral faculties, trans- 
ferred the monuments of their labor, from one 
century to another, with greater force and with more 
evil consequences, than have the higher sentiments 
of the mind. 

It being understood that this work pertains solely 
to certain portions of the metaphysical nature of man, 
and not to external events farther than they reflect the , 
various degrees of weakness and strength, which, by 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 437 

diflferent causes, and at different periods, the mental 
faculties were forced to assume, we shall omit all 
narration of the events of American history which do 
not contribute to this one end. Besides, this branch 
of the subject would be superfluous, as several able 
historians have already treated it in a masterly way. 
The first colonial settlers of North British America, 
those who cleared the forests of New England, and 
the plantations of the South, excepting a certain inde- 
pendence of spirit and a more fervent zeal for religious 
opinions, were not, as a whole, in a much more exalted 
condition in those faculties which produce moral prin- 
ciples, than were their brethren whom they left behind 
in their native land. Whatever evidence there may 
be on this question, will, without doubt, be found by 
the history of each in favor of the early emigrants. 
The difference, however, in mental characteristics 
which existed between them, is not to be regarded as 
very considerable. The very first settlers of the coun- 
try, more especially those who landed at Plymouth 
Rock and at James Town, Virginia, if one take not 
into consideration the character of those who arrived 
shortly thereafter, might, as respects the general 
principles embodied in morality, be regarded as the 
apostles of the British nation. But, during this 
reflection, it must not be forgotten that they were 
followed by a host of the most ambitious and 



438 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

enterprising men, who were as unprincipled as their 
nndertakings were dangerons. They came over the 
sea with appointments of the crown and with land 
grants, in most cases unmerited privileges, or for the 
purpose of peculation, by gathering power from the 
necks of the people, in fraudulent collusion with the 
agents of the imperial government. 

The whole political career of Great Britain toward 
her newly planted colonies was adapted, in its nature, 
to more deeply nerve the feelings of justice and com- 
passion in the early Americans, than had that 
great controversy which gave birth to the reformation. 
As the former began where the latter left off, and con- 
tinued much the same action upon the mental powers 
of the people, they were making rapid progress to 
entirely surmount those difficult conditions of the pro- 
pensities, under which the inhabitants of England, 
after a partial growth of the colonies, appeared 
to be relapsing. 3 In this mental status, parliament, 



3 " With the restoration of the royal liousc, immorality had come in upon 
England like a flood. The hatred of Puritanism extended itself to the vener- 
able things that Puritans revered, and to those habits of blameless living that 
Puritans baa attempted (not always wisely) to enforce. The king's example 
of ostentatious vice was attractive to loyal minds. The court, with which the 
church was enthusiastically allied, was flagitiously and imprudently profligate. 
The fine gentleman scarcely maintained his character, unless, besides being a 
libertine and a scoffer, he was a pensioner and a pimp. The king's bishops 
had to keep on civil terms with the king's harlots. The latest historian is fain 
to record, as ' an unquestionable and a most instructive fact, that the years 
during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith, 
were precisely the years during which national virtue was at the lowest 
point.' "—Palfrey's History of Nbw England, vol.2, page 437. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 439 

supported by the middle classes, forwarded measures 
more adapted to finally destroy, than in the end to 
promote British interests in the west. Whatever these 
classes desired, which tended to increase their fortunes, 
was sanctioned, aided, and even enforced by the repre- 
sentative powers of the realm. * And, moreover, those 
of Great Britain who had assumed the care of the 
spiritual welfare of the people, had professed, as a sole 
object of earthly life, to be actuated by divine inspira- 
tion to save the souls of men, were seized with the same 
uncommon greed for gold, for power and for distinc- 
tion. They endeavored, by the aid of parliament, of 
the established church, and of the crown, to found an 
hierarchy in the colonies of America, which was little 
less odious to the inhabitants than had been that of 
Rome to the most enthusiastic reformers. They were 
triumphant with home authority. ^ The executive 



4 To support home interests, perhaps nothing was more designed, for the 
time only, to carry out this object, than her financial policy toward the colonies. 

'In 1738, the New England currency was worth but one hundred for five hun- 
dred ; that of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, one hundred 
for one hundred and sixty or seventy, or two hundred ; of South Carolina, one 
for eight, while of North Carolina— of all the states the least commercial in its 
character— the paper was in London esteemed worth but one for fourteen, in 
the colony but one for ten. And yet the policy itself was not repudiated. The 
statesmen of England never proposed or desired to raise the domestic currency 
of the colonies to an equality with that of the great commercial world."— 
Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. 3, page 389. 

5 "The ministers of Massachusetts," [of the English church,] "by the 
hand of Cotton Mather, desired a synod, ' to recover and establish the faith 
and order of the gospel.' The council assents; the house hesitates, and, by a 
reference to the next session, gives opportunity for instruction from the 
people. The bishop of London anticipates their decision, and a reprimand 



440 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

strove to enforce those unjust and pernicious princi- 
ples, which created the code of partial descent in 
England, in the case of intestate estates in the colony 
of Connecticut. It amended the law of equal distri- 
bution, although, by the energetic resistance of the 
provincials, George II and his government were com- 
pelled to recede from their position. ^ 

Though the aristocracy met with disappointment in 
many of their schemes, they appeared to be emboldened 
to more unprincipled measures and more hazardous 
undertakings. The governor of New York, in 1734, 
opposed the whole inhabitants of the colony, and 
declared it his purpose to set the laws of surveys, of 
proprietary rights, at defiance; and it was evident 
that, by new conferences of those lands, the title of 
which had long been settled, upon those devoted to 
the crown, he designed to establish absolute princi- 
ples over the rising empire of the west. It was also 
as reasonable to conclude, from most of the cir- 
cumstances which attended his conduct, that he was 



from England forbids ' the authoritative ' meeting, as a bad precedent for dis- 
senters. An English prelate was once more the opponent of the religion of 
New England."— Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. 3, page 
391 ; also note 2, on page 330 of vol. 3, Palfrey's History of New England. 

6 " The farmers of Connecticut loved to divide their domain among their 
children. In regard to Intestate estates, their law was annulled in England, 
and the English law favoring the eldest born was declared to be in force 
among them. Republican equality seemed endangered ; but, in the short 
conflict between the European system and the American system, the new 
legislation triumphed, and the king receded from the vain project of enforcing 
English rules of descent on the husbandmen r.f New England."— Bancroft's 
History of the United States, vol. 3, pages 392 and 393. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 441 

carrying out a systematic and deliberate policy of the 
home government. When told that his course was in 
violation of law, he replied: "Do you think I mind 
that? I have great interests in Ireland." But mon- 
archical influences had reached and tainted others 
beside the imperial executive agent. The legislative 
body concurred in his schemes and sanctioned his 
measures. It is also a little remarkable that this legis- 
lature should be wholly unlimited in its duration, so 
far as the colony was concerned, and at the same time 
for its existence made dependent upon the crown.** 
That the governor had secret instructions to remove 
judges and appoint new ones, more adapted by deprav- 
ity to acquiesce in his course, appeared from the man- 
ner in which he displaced them and supplied their 
positions. Publishers of papers, who warned the 
people of the danger to be apprehended from an 
increase of absolute principles, were arrested and 
imprisoned. Their counsel were disbarred for having 
taken exceptions to the jurisdiction of the court. ^ The 



7 "At New York the people and the governor are in collision. Casby, 
imitating Andros in Massachusetts, insists on new surveys of land and new 
grants, in lieu of the old. ♦ * * * The assembly, chosen under royalist 
influences, and continued from year to year, offered no resistance. The rights 
of the electors were impaired, for the period of the assembly was unlimited. 
The courts of law were not so pliable ; and Casby, dis.placing the chief-justice, 
himself appointed judges, without soliciting the consent of the council or 
waiting for the approbation of the sovereign." — Bakcroft's History of thb 
United States, vol. 3, page 393. 

8 Ibid. 



442 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

juries, however, belonging to a class less corruptible 
than the courts, in cases of libel gave evidence of 
superior moral qualities by their verdicts of not 
guilty. ^ 

But during these oppressive acts of the crown and 
commercial classes of Great Britain, the courage of the 
colonists was being subjected to an unusual growth by 
an unseen power. That power was from within, the 
exciting cause from without. There appeared a steady 
progress of opposition to all the aggressive acts which 
emanated from abroad. England was doing no evil 
service, for as she took their substance from them 
against law, and subjected them to dependency upon 
absolute principles, she was at the same time develop- 
ing in them those faculties and feelings which are more 
enduring than gold and garters. 

In the other colonies, the administration of the 
selfish feelings of the English was not less traceable. In 
Massachusetts, as early as 1684, the charter, which had 
existed fifty-five years, had extended some freedom, 
and a little latitude, to the feelings of the people with- 
out violating their moral feelings, was abrogated, and 
the prosperity and welfare of the inhabitants of that 
province were made dependent upon the whims of a 
prince, whose mind was still darkened by the doctrines 



9 See case of ZenG;er, Bancroft's History of the United States, vol, 
3, pages 393 and 394. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 443 

and ceremonies of the Romish faith. But his acts 
cannot be regarded solely as the result of his despotic 
will ; he had, as executive, but given expression to the 
feelings of avarice which pervaded, without a proper 
balance, all the commercial classes of England. ^ <* The 
abrogation of the charter was procured by the mer- 
chants and the manufacturers of England, and visited 
on the colonial people as a penalty for having violated 
the Navigation Act, which, by compliance, compelled 
the provincials to buy English goods at English prices, 
and in payment therefor return American products at 
whatever values the latter thought it to be for their 
interests to advance. * * Those who traded with nations 

10 That the Navigation Act was passed in the interests of the merchants 
and manufacturers, none ever doubted ; that they procured its passago by 
bringing their influence to bear on the parliament and the crown, there is as 
little doubt. After its passage they treated it as a creature of their own. The 
following supports both views: " Complaints were brought against them," 
[the people of New England,"] "the preceding year, by the merchants and 
manufacturers of England, for their disregard of the Navigation Act. The 
governors of the colonies were therefore commanded to enforce a strict 
obedience to the commercial regulations. Commissions were transmitted, 
empowering persons to administer an oath framed to secure a strict observ- 
ance of those laws."— HiNTON'a United States, vol. 1, page 66. 

"Moreover, the interests of the trade of the nation had precedence of 
the political interests of the princes. The members of the legislature watched 
popular excitements, and listened readily to the petitions of the merchants; 
and these in their turn did not desire to see one of their own number charged 
with the conduct of the finances as chancellor of the exchequer; but wished 
rather for some member of the aristocracy, friendly to their interests. They 
preferred to speak through such an one, and rebelled against the necessity of 
doing so, as little as they did at the employment of a barrister to plead their 
cause in the halls of justice."— Bancroft, vol. 5, page 50. See also page 93 as 
to the complaints and the influence of the merchants on Grenville. 

11 "The Navigation Act of the commonwealth was made the basis of 
ftirther and stricter legislation. A law of the convention parliament forbade 
the importation of merchandise into any English colony, except in Englisli 



444 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

bordering on the Mediterranean, in the south of 
Europe, were not to have passes granted them, by 
which they could be protected in their lives from the 
merciless ferocity of Turkish pirates. ^ - Notwithstand- 
ing that Englishmen, wherever they are domiciled, had, 
under the British constitution, equal privileges before 
the law, the American branch of that great family were 
to be subjected to a loss of vessel property, to impris- 
onment, or to a penalty of death, for not donating the 
principal amount of the value of their goods to the 
middle classes of their mother country; if by so 



vessels, with English crews ; and, specifying various colonial staples, It prohib- 
ited their exportation from the place of production to any other ports than 
such as belonged to England. The penalty in both cases was forfeiture of 
vessel and cargo. The oppressive system was further extended by an act 
which confined the Import trade of the colonists to a direct commerce with 
England, forbidding them to bring them from any other country, or in any 
other but English ships, the products, not only of England, but of any Euro- 
pean soil."— Palfrey's History of New England, vol. 3, page 444. 

It cannot fail to be seen from the above, that in securing such a close 
monopoly to themselves, the prices at which the English bought and sold, 
would be regulated by the supply and demand. There was much of the time 
an over supply of American products, and hence the prices at which the mer- 
chants bought, were as low as their hearts could desire. " There were articles 
of New England production, which the English merchants, whether by con- 
sumption or commerce, could not exhaust ; while it concerned the English 
merchants, that the colonists should somehow get money to pay for English 
manufactures."— luiD., note 1. 

12 " Compiainants stated, that the Inhabitants of New England not only 
traded to most parts of Europe, but encouraged foreigners to go and traffic 
with them; that they supplied the other plantations with those foreign pro- 
ductions which ought only to be sent from England." * * "To add weight 
to these measures," [a close enforcement of the Navij/ation Act,] "it was- 
determined that no Mediterranean passes should be granted to New England, 
to protect its vessels against the Turks, till it is seen what dependence it will 
acknowledge on his majesty, or whether his custom-house officers are received 
as in other colonies."— Holmes' Auebioan Annals, vol. 1, page 885; cited by 
Mr. HiNTON, vol. 1, page 66. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 445 

doing they were disposed to part with them at higher 
prices to nations in the south of Europe, bordering on 
the sea. And thus the speculative classes, for it can 
be attributed to none but them, under the rule of the 
propensities, had the disposition to starve the people 
of the colonies, when it contributed to their riches, 
and indirectly, by abandoning them to those whose 
character was no better than freebooters, be the means 
of their imprisonment and death. They were accessory 
before the fact to the enslavement or murder of all nav- 
igators of New England who should be so unfortunate 
as to fall into the hands of Turkish pirates. They 
were in this manner engaged in the same offenses 
against whole peoples, for which, in single cases, they 
were, by their statutes and the law of nations, in the 
habit of transporting and executing felons. 

Even after these oppressive burdens to the colonies, 
through which a major part of the commercial classes 
of England had amassed great fortunes, they pro- 
ceeded by new tactics to emancipate themselves from 
the payment of home taxes. This was to be effected 
by discharging a public debt, contracted in their own 
interests, by redisposition of lands in the colonies. In 
view of this object, these classes, at a period of history 
when the British empire was felt by all mankind to 
be the first among potent nations, through their gov- 
ernor, who, if not in form, was their agent in reality, 



446 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

proceeded to deprive the farmers of title to their lit- 
tle plantations, for which, to people of Great Britain, 
payment in full had once been made. He declared 
the titles to be void, and forced them to repayment. 
There appeared to be no end to British greed and lust 
of power; having impoverished the inhabitants by 
enforcement of the Navigation Act, the abrogation of 
the charter, and the reduction of agriculturists to want 
by plundering them of their farms, this agent of Brit- 
ish interests imposed restrictions upon marriage cer- 
emonies, public worship, and the administration of 
estates. These acts were designed to extort money 
from the people, and, by directing it into another 
channel, give it to those who were in nowise entitled 
to it. ^ ' America was a grand field to amass fortunes 
for the English, but for no others. But in Massachu- 
setts, no less than in "New York, tyranny, by being 
rendered practical, had the same effect upon the 
minds of the people.** They exhibited a stubborn 

13 "This latter appointment caused the most gloomy forebodings. Sir 
Edmond Andros had been governor of New Torii, and it was known that his 
conduct there had been arbitrary and tyrannical. Having secured a major- 
ity in the council, he assumed control over the press, appointing Randolph 
licenser. He estabished new and oppressive regulations concerning taxes, 
public worship, marriages, and the settlement of estates. His subordinate 
officers, as well as himself, extorted enormous fees for their services. He 
declared, that the charter being cancelled, the old titles to land were of no 
validity, and compelled the inhabitants, in order to avoid suits before judges 
dependent on his will, to take out new patents, for which large sums were 
demanded."— HiNTON's United States, vol. 1, page 66. 

14 " But, though the charter was gone, the spirit which It had cherished, 
and the habits which it had formed, were retained."— Ibid. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 447 

opposition; and, if to their antagonists they were 
unequal in power, they served to render the odious 
administration of James II unpopular, and somewhat 
contributed in driving him from the throne. ^ ^ 

The people of Virginia were more devoted to the 
interests of the crown, the aristocracy, and the estab- 
lished church, than were the inhabitants of New 
England. Through their great fondness of aristocratic 
origin, they made pretensions to illustrious descent, or 
in living, aped the manners and extravagance of the 
landed proprietors of England. By these characteris- 
tics, they were regarded, by the people of the home 
government, as secure dupes to a craft which, if it did 
not wholly arise, did receive more lasting vigor, and 
more forbidding impressions from the stagnant state of 
morals in the middle ages. It was through this state 
of feeling toward the same race in the east, that the 
early Virginians received more favor and less despotic 
administration from the rulers than the other colonists. 
Their courtier-like dependency upon the most success- 
ful pillagers of feudal times, well recommended them 

IS " Happily, this despotic rule was not of long duration. In the begin- 
ning of 1689, a rumor reached Boston that William, prince of Orange, had 
invaded England, with the intention of dethroning the king. Animated by 
the hope of deliverance, the people rushed spontaneously to arms, took pos- 
session of the fort, seized Andros, Randolph, and other obnoxious persons, 
and placed them in confinement. A council of safety, consisting of their 
former magistrates, was then organized to administer the government until 
authentic intelligence should be received."— Hinton's United States, vol. 
1, page 66. See also PAiiFKEY's HiSIOBT OF Nsw ENaiiAlTD, vol. 3, pages 574 
and 575. 



448 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

to the favor of Charles II ; and they were to have the 
inestimable privilege of being governed by constitu- 
tional laws which secured, as the world had been 
much informed by British statesmen, life, liberty and 
protection of property to ever}^ member of the king- 
dom, however humble might be his station. ^ ^ Perhaps 
they supposed it was far better to be in bondage to 
the crown, as it was easier to submit to his arbitrary 
measures than be plundered by his eastern commercial 
subjects through the acts of their parliament. But 
the people of this colony, like those of the other 
colonies, were soon brought to contemplate the arbi- 
trary administration of a more potent force than could 
be constituted by the king and aristocracy alone. 
When the Navigation Act of the commercial classes 
was passed, the gross injustice of its terms moved 
what conscience they were possessed of into active 
opposition to English misrule. 



16 "The colonists of Virginia, or a majority of them, were Episcopalians, 
and attached to the church of England; the religion of that church, indeed, 
was established by law in the colony ; and it is evident that they were strongly 
in favor of the royal cause. Their warm-hearted loyalty could not fail to be 
exhilarating to Charles II, during his banishment. He transmitted from 
Breda a new commission to Sir William Berkeley, as governor of Virginia, 
declaring his intention of ruling and governing the colony according to the 
laws and statutes of England, which were to be established there. Thus while 
that prince was not permitted to rule over a foot of land in England, he exer- 
cised the royal jurisdiction over Virginia. On receiving the first account of 
the restoration, the joy and exultation of the colonists was unbounded."— 
HiNTON's United States, vol. 1, page 36. 

Parliament made war on Virginia for this loyalty of the people to the 
king.— Ibis., page 35. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION'. 449 

The inhabitants of the Carolinas were subjected to 
all the indignities and oppression to which a people 
could be treated. For six years, under the adminis- 
tration of Seth Lothel, the honest were defrauded and 
robbed. He cultivated crime, and, so far as his influ- 
ence extended, suppressed all practical appearance of 
virtue. Devoted by the whole powers of his soul to a 
vicious life, he persecuted the innocent, but allowed 
felons to go at large with all the liberty of perfect 
saints. Although well informed in regard to his 
character, the home government did not remove him 
nor interfere to check the corruption of his administra- 
tion; he was impeached and expelled the colony by 
the people whom he had so outrageously wronged. 
During the administration, or plundering adventure, 
of Colonel Robert Quarry, the government of Eng- 
land, from the Carolinas, encouraged and supplied the 
pirates of the West Indies. With a prospect that the 
gold, which these freebooters had taken from their 
lifeless victims, would eventually flow into the pock- 
ets of officers and colonists, enabling the latter to pay 
their dues of tenancy to the proprietaries, they were 
treated with more courtesy than men of good manners 
and morals. They were made associates of the gov- 
ernor, and, being always well received, rendezvoused 
in the province. Charles II went so far in endorse- 
ment of their life and conduct as to knight Henry 

29 



450 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

Morgan, a piratical chief, for his daring acts on the 
high seas in violation of the laws of nations. ' "* But 
the morals of this colony were of a detestable nature, 
for they appeared more turbulent under good govern- 
ors than when ruled by despotic usurpers. Though 
this was the character of a small majority, nearly one- 
half were people of good morals. "Lord Granville, 
one of the proprietors, a bigoted churchman, in con- 
junction with the governor," his "tool" and parasite, 
James Moore, notwithstanding that the Episcopalians 
were in the minority, by "interfering with the elections 
and bribing the voters, succeeded in procuring a 
majority in the assembly," by which the Episcopalian 
religion was fastened on the people of the colony. 
"The dissenters thus saw themselves at once deprived 
of those privileges for which they had abandoned their 

17 "During the time of his government " [Robert Quarry's] " a number of 
pirates put into Charleston, and purchased provisions with their Spanish gold 
and silver. Those public robbers, instead of being tried by the laws of Eng- 
land, were treated with great civility and friendship, in violation of the laws 
of nations. Whether the governor was ignorant of the treaty made with 
Spain, by which England had withdrawn her former toleration from these 
plunderers of the Spanish dominions, or whether lie was afraid to bring them 
to trial from the notorious courage of their companions in the "West Indies, 
we have not suflQcient authority to affirm ; but one thing is certain, that 
Charles II, for several years after the restoration, winked at their depreda- 
tions. ****** He even knighted Henry Morgan, a Welshman, who had 
plundered Porto Bello and Panama, and carried off large treasures from them. 
For several years so formidable was this body of plunderers in the West 
Indies, that they struck a terror into every quarter of the Spanish dominions. 
Their gold and silver, which they lavishly spent in the colony, insured them a 
kind reception among the Carolinians, who opened their ports to them freely* 
and furnished them with necessaries. They could purchase the favor of the 
governor and the friendship of the people, for what they deemed a trifling 
consideration."— HiNTON's United States, vol. 1, pages 144 and 145. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 451 

native country, and enconntered the dangers and the 
hardships of the ocean, and a wilderness." ^^ If the 
proprietors, after a long time, had partly discounte- 
nanced the transactions of Governor Quarry with the 
West India pirates, and thereby partially recovered 
their standing in the eyes of humanity, they, at a 
subsequent period, exhibited the worst of qualities in 
refusing to bear any portion of the expense of the 
great Indian war directed against the inhabitants of 
the province. The proprietaries being the only land 
owners, were justly chargeable with the whole expense 
of the war ; and the people, as vassals to their liege 
lords, were, according to the principles of feudalism, 
bound to follow their superiors to battle. But in this 
instance, when the tomahawk, the scalping-knife and 
the stake threatened every individual in the province, 
it became extermination to the people or to the 
Indians. This, fortunately for the whites, proved to 
be the fate of the latter. After the proprietaries had 
wholly refused to respond, in the smallest amount, 
to the payment of the indebtedness incurred, the 
colonists, like good citizens who were bound that all 
should equally bear the burdens of the military 
administration, disposed of the lands, from which 
the Indians had been driven, to five hundred Irishmen, 



i8 HoTTON, vol. 1, page 14S: Samuel Walker, Boston, second quarto 
«dition. 



452 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

appropriating tlie proceeds of the sale to discharge 
the public debt. After this people from the "emerald 
isle" had endured the severest trials at sea, had paid 
their all, and become settled upon their lands, they 
were driven from these frontier possessions by Lord 
Granville and his associates. Many of the exiles died 
from want. ^ ® Had the money of these Irish purchas- 
ers passed into proprietary possession, no complaints 
would have been made. "The people were exasper- 
ated, and longed for a change of masters; and the 
corrupt and oppressive conduct of Trott, the chief- 
justice, and Rhett, the receiver-general, increased the 
discontent. Of the former the governor and council 
complained to the proprietors, and solicited his recall ; 
but instead of removing him, they thanked him for his 
services, and removed the governor and council. They 
drew up articles of impeachment against Trott, accus- 
ing him of corruption and gross misconduct, and sent 
an agent to England to maintain their accusation before 
the proprietors ; but he was still continued in office."^" 

19 In this war the aborigines almost completely exterminated the settle- 
ment of the palatines. So fully was this wrought, that the historian says that 
*' Before them was the repose of innocence ; behind, the sleep of death." 
Eight nations had formed an alliance to murder every inhabitant. The Indian 
forces were composed of all the warriors contained in the Yamassees, Conga- 
rees, Catawbas, Cherokees, Tuscaroras, Corees, Creeks and Apalachians. * * * 
"The terms offered were so favorable that five hundred Irishmen immediately 
came over, and planted themselves on lands. The proprietors most unwisely, 
as well as unjustly, refused to sanction the proceedings of the assembly, and 
deprived these emigrants of their land. Reduced to extreme poverty, some 
perished from want." — Hinton's United States, vol. 1, pages 149 and 150. 

20 Ibid. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 453 

But the very beginning of the operations of these 
grantees, across the sea, was adapted, by the measures 
of the legal draft, to inspire dread had they been 
known to the public. In constitutional provisions 
the proprietors endeavored to bind upon the people 
those barbarous enormities which originated at an 
early period with the uncultivated savages of the north 
of Europe. The pen of a philosopher, John Locke, was 
employed to draft its articles, among which was one 
to establish feudalism in America. Three degrees of 
nobility were to be formed, which ever after were des- 
tined to debar the rightful owners of the soil from 
possession in fee, and make them dependent on those 
whose ancestors had come into ownership, not by pay. 
ment, not by law, civil nor natural, but by the assump- 
tions of a superior chief, who, himself, had no claim to 
exercise such authority except such as he derived by 
injustice and fraud. The first and most consider- 
able title of nobility established in the colony was 
that of landgrave, with unalienable possessions of 
forty-eight thousand acres of land; the third, the 
cazique, of twenty-four thousand; and the baron, 
with possession of twelve thousand acres of unalien- 
able land. 2 1 It will at once be seen that it would 



21 Three nobles collectively would be entitled to hold 84,000 acres, and 
taking an average, vrould give to the possession of each 28,000 acres. There 
being in North America 8,500,000 square miles, or 5,440,000,000 acres, it would 
require but 194,386 such persons to take up the whole vast area. 



454 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

require but one hundred and ninety-four thousand 
two hundred and eighty-six persons to hold from 
the rest of mankind the whole of the vast territory 
of North America. 

But this greed for gold, for power, and for fame, 
which had overstepped its limits, had trampled on 
every right, moral and divine, of others, without a 
symptom of remorse, was about to be deprived of 
those great and desirable ends for which it yearned. 
The proprietors were arraigned in court for their 
corrupt, venal and oppressive conduct toward the 
colonists, for having grossly violated the compact 
made with Charles II, which, by its extraordinary 
terms, had given them almost unlimited power over 
the Carolinians. The disposition which they mani- 
fested to plunder a people whom tyranny and 
misfortune had planted in the provinces, had been 
carried into such systematic and active operations 
that, had the scene of their exploits been laid in 
England instead of America, they would have at 
once been degraded from the social ranks which 
they held in the civil state, convicted as common 
malefactors, either executed on the scaffold or 
expelled the kingdom. They, however, did not 
entirely escape punishment, as they were convicted 
of the charges alleged against them, to their dis- 
comfiture, and, by consequence, declared to have 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 455 

forever forfeited all rights of ownership to the col- 
onies of the Carolinas.2 2 Thns we see how those 
mental faculties, to which the grantees had become 
subordinated, when not directed by those of justice 
and compassion, not only conduct the individual to 
disappointment, but lead him to those disasters and 
to that ruin from which he and his posterity can never 
be wholly emancipated. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, 
Persia, Grreece, Tyre, Carthage, Syracuse and Rome 
had been subdued to those faculties, and as they, in 
their very nature, when uncontrolled by the moral 
sentiments, are self-destructive to the individual and 
to the nation, all these ancient states were wiped out of 
existence, or so far wrecked as to be easily destroyed 
by any chance soldier of fortune. These men were 
learned in the history of them all, yet they gathered 
no salutary lessons from the sad misfortunes of their 
fall. Although learned in the great events of kings, 
of remarkable battles, of the constitutions of renowned 
republics, and all the knavery of modern diplomacy, 
they were wholly ignorant of the producing causes of 
true glory and of gross infamy; and one must conclude 



22 " The agent from Carolina at length procured a hearing from the lords 
of the regency and council in England, the king being at that time in Hanover, 
who gave it as their opinion that the proprietors had forfeited their charter, 
and ordered the attorney-general to take out a scire facias against it. In con- 
sequence of this decision, in September, 1720, they appointed General Francis 
Nicholson provisional governor of the province, with a commisBlon rrom the 
king."— HiNTON's United States, vol. 1, page 152, 



456 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

that, whatever might be the opportunities which they 
possessed for obtaining knowledge, or the positions 
which they occupied, by the organizations of their 
minds, they were wholly unqualified to direct the 
legislative affairs of a nation. Like most politicians, 
they assumed to know everything ; but, in fact, knew 
nothing more than the history of a few events, and the 
modes of pulling political wires for their own selfish 
purpose by corrupting the vulgar. Half a century 
afterward the same causes, which deprived them of 
those great possessions, dismembered the British mon- 
archy, and out of the western division erected a 
powerful rival to her commercial interests. But 
those injuries which they inflicted on the colonists 
were slight, when compared to those evil effects 
which, by hereditary laws, they were destined to 
produce, through lineal succession, on the moral 
qualities of England and the society of Europe. 

Such was the character of the acts of those who 
were largely interested, by a pecuniary view, in the 
plantations of the Carolinas. Millions of acres of 
land, territory larger than the British Isles, had been 
granted to these proprietaries by the crown, without 
the cost to them of a single dollar for the fee. Who 
could suppose that such great fortune would not be 
sufficient in itself to induce its recipients to be just, if 
no more? It is perfectly evident, however, from the 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 457 

history of their conduct, that it was the direct effect 
of their lower nature, having greatly fallen behind 
that semi-moral state, in possession of which their 
grand ancestors had issued from the storms of the 
reformation. They had relapsed under an almost 
complete rule of the animal faculties, a condition 
which characterized the entire speculative classes of 
the British nation at the close of the first, and at the 
beginning of the last, half of the seventeenth century. 

All these various acts, arising from egotism and 
greed, predominating qualities in the larger portion of 
the English race east of the ocean at this period, con- 
tinued to act as an external influence on the colonial 
mind down to the breaking out of war between France 
and Britain. For the seven years which this war lasted 
there was, for the first time after the rupture of Henry 
VIII with the primacy of Rome to 1756, a period of 
about two hundred and twenty years, a partial repose 
of the moral faculties of the mind in the Puritans 
of America. 

During the struggles of the primitive elements of 
morality on this side of the ocean against the selfish 
and animal qualities of the speculative classes on the 
other, there had, by reciprocal action, been a corre- 
sponding growth in the antagonistic faculties of the 
two races in both worlds. The parliament of Great 
Britain was controlled by the passions and prejudices 



458 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of men, whose character was in conformity to an age 
and country which had been molded by relentless 
civil wars ; by strifes of a people to obtain individual 
power by checking and appropriating the encroach- 
ments of the crown, the prerogatives of which they 
both exalted and diminished at pleasure ; by attempt- 
ing to control the commerce of the great west, which 
by nature was free to all ; by stealing human beings 
from Africa, and forcing them as slaves on the settlers 
of North America; by unremitting efforts to accumu- 
late great fortunes by unjustifiable means ; and by an 
odious and belittling ambition for useless titles, for the 
procurement of which the middle classes did not scru- 
ple at any measure employed designed to forward this 
one object. Internal refinement, produced by virtue 
and intelligence, had undergone wonderful changes in 
two generations— existed in great minority and reposed 
in the tombs of their great ancestors. The condition 
of mind in the masses of England better resembled 
those of the later days of Tyre and of Carthage than 
the earlier ones of Persia and of Rome. It was these 
elements in the eastern branch of the English race that, 
through a period of nearly two centuries, performed 
and mostly finished up the work of emancipating the 
moral faculties from their bondage to the animal in 
the inhabitants of America. 

At the close of the French war, in 1763, those moral 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 459 

faculties, whicli had partially slumbered in want of 
agitating causes for seven years, were destined to be 
moved to more active conflicts against man's lower 
nature than had previously characterized their pro- 
gress under British rule. The mental powers were, 
however, better fortified for succeeding antagonisms 
by confidence of successful resistance to English arro- 
gance, through the moral courage which the propensi- 
ties had gained in the controversy of the royal house 
of Brunswick, of Bourbon, and of Castile. When this 
contention for the entire possession of America, on the 
continent of which the colonial people had borne the 
brunt, had terminated, the bellicose tendencies of the 
ruling classes of England renewed their attacks on 
English residents of the provinces. "The conquest 
of Canada had scarcely been effected, when rumors 
were extensively prevalent that a different system of 
government was about to be adopted by the parent 
state ; that the charters would be taken away, and the 
colonies reduced to royal governments. The officers 
of the customs began to enforce with strictness all the 
acts of parliament regulating the trade of the colonies, 
several of which had been suspended or had become 
obsolete." ^^ The principal acts of the British parlia- 
ment and dependent appointees of the crown, which 
contributed to promote activity in the moral faculties 



33 HiNTON'a Umrso States, vol. 1, page 183. 



460 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of the Americans from this time to the dawn of inde- 
pendence, were less potent in number than in nature.** 
The principles which directed tho English mind to 
that system of commercial restraint which was inflicted 
on the colonies for about one hundred years, had orig- 
inated and become thoroughly introduced as par^' of 
the policy of government in almost every despotism of 
Europe. "Might made right," and the weak, under 
the rule of the strong, had become accustomed to sub- 
mit to arbitrary exactions. But whatever might have 
been the principles upon which the nations on the 
continent were based, it was claimed by English states- 
men, and it was true for all practical purposes, that 
by the constitution, British dominions were territories 



24 As Mr. Abbott has put these principal questions of contention between 
the two countries in concise form, I deem it best to subjoin them : 

"In the conflict of jurisdiction in respect to the government of the 
American colonies, between the colonies themselves on the one side, and the 
king and parliament of Great Britain on the other, there were four principal 
points in regard to which the parties came most frequently and most earnestly 
into collision. ♦ * * * » These four points, respecting claims made by the 
British and disallowed and resisted from time to time, with more or less 
eriruestness, by the colonies, were the following : 

"1. The English government claimed the exclusive right to regulate and 
control the whole foreign trade and commerce of the colonies. 

"2. They claimed that the Judges In all the colonial courts should be not 
only appointed by the king, that is, by the home government, but that they 
should hold office not permanently, but only during the king's pleasure, thus 
making them wholly dependent on his will. 

"3. That the governors, too, should not only be appointed by the king or 
his ministers, but should also be made independent of the colonies, by having 
a permanent salary settled upon them. 

"4. That besides the control of the foreign commerce of the colonies, 
parliament also had the right of internal taxation, in respect to them— that is, 
the right to levy taxes upon the people themselves, as they were accustomed 
to do upon the people of England."— American History, vol. 6, pages 36, 37. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 461 

in which political liberty was enjoyed. Laws, how- 
ever, may be created with the most equitable provisions, 
yet if the qualities of a majority of the people are 
such that they cannot be carried into effect, there is 
no more protection to the person and to the rights of 
property under and by them, than there wonld be did 
such laws have no existence. Such was the condition 
in which the British government and its dependent 
colonies were placed. Yet it being known to English 
lawyers that whatever might be the customs and 
usages of other nations toward their colonists, they 
had no binding influence on British subjects by which 
the same could be erected into a system in any of the 
territories of Great Britain without first having passed 
parliament and become a law of the empire, it became 
necessary for the legislature to give formal sanction to 
a measure which was in keeping only with the most 
absolutely despotic minds. 

There was, however, one difficulty which British 
statesmen had to surmount, that did not arise to inter- 
fere with the autocratic wishes of the other nations in 
their progress of legal and political frauds. This 
difficulty was one of the fundamental laws of the 
constitution, which gave every subject the privilege of 
representation. Without the subject was represented, 
he could not be bound by any of the acts of parlia- 
ment, because he was not party thereto ; the principles 



462 HISTOEY OP THE DECLENSION. 

of contracts being the basis upon which the constitu- 
tion and the whole judicature of Great Britain were 
reposed. Whether this principle of the constitution 
was, during the reign of George III, carried into 
practical operation or not, it was, nevertheless, the 
palladium of English liberty, and will forever be the 
most distinguishing feature which made British civil- 
ization superior to her great contemporary powers. 
'"The declaratory bill,' a bill affirming the right of 
parliament to tax America, 'now lying on your table,' 
said Camden in the house of lords in 1766, 'is abso- 
lutely illegal; contrary to the fundamental laws of 
nature ; contrary to the fundamental laws of this 
constitution: a constitution grounded on the eternal 
and immutable laws of nature ; a constitution, whose 
foundation and center is liberty ; which sends liberty 
to every subject that is, or may happen to be, within 
any part of its ample circumference. Nor, my lords, 
is the doctrine new ; it is as old as the constitution ; it 
grew up with it, indeed it is its support ; taxation and 
representation are inseparably united; God hath joined 
them; no British parliament can separate them; to 
endeavor to do it, is to stab our very vitals. My posi- 
tion is this ; I repeat it ; I will maintain it to my last 
hour; taxation and representation are inseparable. 
Whatever is a man's own, is absolutely his own ; no 
man hath a right to take it from him without his. 



HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 463 

consent, either expressed by himself or his represent- 
ative; whoever attempts to do it, attempts an injury; 
whoever does it, commits a robbery.' " ^ ^ " 'As subjects, 
they' " [the Americans! " 'are entitled to the common 
right of representation, and cannot be bound to pay 
taxes without their consent. 

" 'Taxation is no part of the governing power. The 
taxes are a voluntary gift and grant of the commons 
alone. In an American tax, what do we do ? We, your 
majesty' s commons of Great Britain, give and grant to 
your majesty, — what? Our own property? No. We 
give and grant to your majesty the property of your 
majesty's commons in America. It is an absurdity 
in terms.' "2^ Taxation without representation was 
regarded by the ablest statesmen and lawyers of the 
empire as a legislative fraud, not on the Americans only, 
but on the great masses of England also. Up to the time 
of the passage of c. 7, by 8 Henry YI, suffrage was exer- 
cised by all in England, however small might be the 
amount of their fortunes. ^ "» Before the passage of this 



25 Speech in the house of lords, as quoted by Bancboft, vol. 5, page 447. 

26 Speech op WhiIiIAM Pitt, in the house of commons, January 14, 1766. 
Ibid., 384. 

27 The exordium of this act acknowledges universal suffrage: "Item. 
'Whereas the elections of knights of shires to come to the parliaments 
of our lord the king, in many counties of the realm of England, have now of 
late been made by very great, outrageous, and excessive numbers of people, 
dwelling within the same counties of the realm of England, of the which, most 
part Was of people of small substance and of no value, whereof every of them 
pretended a voice equivalent aa to such elections to be made with the most 



464 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

act, suffrage had long been universal, had become the 
settled law of the land, having had its origin in nature, 
and finally become established by immemorial usage 
as a fundamental law of the British constitution. No 
statesman of England ever before claimed that a 
subject could be taxed without he was represented, 
yet these "rotten parliaments," as they were called, 
entirely ignored this constitutional law whenever 
it conflicted with their passions or interests. The 
house of commons owed its creation to the suffrages 
of the nation, it was subordinate to the people, it 
could not have been superior to its creator; and 
hence, when the act was passed which made forty 
shillings of free lands the qualification of the right 
to the ballot, it became only the expressed wish of 
those who passed it, and not a law, as a constitu- 
tional measure had limited legislative power. Yet as 
a majority of the members of the legislature would 
have small chances of success in succeeding elections 
for new parliaments under this impartial law of the 
constitution, they, in connection with the aristocratic 
branch, claimed that parliament was the supreme 
sovereign power of the kingdom, and that the con- 
stitution was composed of legislative enactments. By 



worthy knights and esquires dwelling within the same counties, whereby man- 
slaughter, riots, batteries and divisions among gentlemen of the same coun- 
ties shall very likely rise and be unless,' etc.*'— The English Constitution, 
by Dr. Fischell, page 432. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 465 

this unwarrantable assumption of power almost tlie 
entire legislature were in rebellion against the rights 
of the people, and continued in usurpation of those 
rights, without any modification, from the reign of 
Henry VI to the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832, 
a period of four centuries. ^^ 

It was by virtue of this constitutional law that the 
parliament of Great Britain had no authority to 
impose internal or external taxes on the colonists of 
America. They had never been represented at West- 
minster, and had they submitted to taxation by the 
parliament, it would have placed them in a worse 
condition than that of slaves let out for reward. The 
Navigation Act, which, for many years, had enriched 
the commercial classes of England, was, to use plain 
language, open robbery. "What made it still worse, it 
was performed under color of legislative authority, 
when forty per cent, of the members knew that no 

38 William Pitt, the earl of Chatham, awed the house of commons Into 
an acquiescence and acknowledgment of this truth when he said : " 'Accord- 
ing to the theory of our constitution there should be a constant connection 
between the representatives and the electors. Will any say that this connec- 
tion now exists?' And Paley, after having laid bare the evils of the electoral 
system, affirms — 'In the end it would only come to this, who ought to be 
elected? and not who should elect?' Junius is entirely of opinion," Hbefore 
the Reform Bill,] "'that juat as easily as they may disfranchise rotten 
boroughs, even so might they disfranchise all commoners by a parliamentary 
resolution.' "—FiscHELL, English Constitution, page 434. It is extremely 
doubtful if the acts passed by the parliaments during the time which elapsed 
from the Disfranchising Act to the Reform Bill, 1832, were binding upon other 
residents in England than such as had a voice in creating the house of 
commons. If statutes were enforced by the courts upon the disfranchised, it 
wa», it seems to us, only adding judicial to legislative frauds. 

30 



466 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

such authority existed, that when officers, under pre- 
tense of official duty, commit a misdemeanor, it 
becomes a more aggravated case of felony than if 
perpetrated by private individuals. Yet the house of 
commons had pretended to represent the body of the 
nation for four centuries, comprising in its embrace 
more than one-fourth of the period from the fall of 
the Roman empire in the west, to the passage of the 
Stamp Act in 1765. It had gradually, without order 
or system, degenerated into a body of brigands. All 
this was as well known to able lawyers and statesmen 
on this side of the ocean as it was to those of the 
same degree of ability and acquirement on the other. 
Samuel Adams, James Otis and their compeers in 
America did not fail in their duty in making known 
to the people the true condition ot the premises, and 
in advising them of their rights. The passage of the 
Navigation Act, the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Bill, 
the extension of the Mutiny Act to American colonies, 
and those other acts of parliament which related to 
the administration of the thirteen colonies, together 
with the constant interference ot the crown to reduce 
them to royal governments, to make judges, governors 
and all appointees dependent upon favors of the royal 
court, kept the feelings of the Americans in a furious 
state of resistance and revolution from the close of the 
French war, in 1763, to the nineteenth of April, 1775, 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 467 

when the slaves of Brunswick were addressed in no 
very flattering terms on the bloody field of Lexington. 
During the whole period of this political revolu- 
tion, before things had so culminated as to place both 
divisions of the empire in armed opposition to 
each other, there were but very few members of either 
branch of the British legislature who had sufficient 
moral co.urage to raise a voice or cast a vote against 
those acts which were as much in subversion of Eng- 
lish liberty at Westminister as at the plantations of 
America. 2 9 Even the "G-reat Commoner" urged that 
"The sovereign power of this country over the 
colonies be asserted in as strong terms as can be 
advised, and be made to extend to every part of 
legislation, that we may bind their trade, confine 
their manufactures and exercise every power what- 
soever except" raising a revenue from them by 
internal taxation.^" " 'If ever one lived more zealous 
than another for the supremacy of parliament and the 
rights of the imperial crown, it was Edmund Burke.' 

29 "In the commons, the resolution," [right to tax America,] "was pre- 
sented by Conway, who himself, at the time of passing the Stamp Act, had 
publicly and almost alone denied the right of parliament to impose the tax 
and twice within twenty days had publicly reiterated that opinon. He now 
treated the question of power as a point of law, which parliament might take 
up. Por himself, he should never be for internal taxes. He would sooner cut 
ofT his right hand than sign an order for sending out a force to maintain them. 
Yet he begged not to be understood to pledge himself for future measures 
not even for the repeal of the Stamp Act."— Bancroft's History OTf thb 
United States, vol. 5, page 415. 

30 Bancroft's History op the United States, vol. 5, page 395. See also 
vol. 6, page 351. 



468' HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION'. 

He was the advocate 'of unlimited legislative power 
over the colonies.' His wishes were 'very earnest to 
keep the whole body of this authority perfect and 
entire.' "^^ 

The whole members of parliament were so intoxi- 
cated with the desire to arrive at political distinction, 
office, power and fortune, that each, wishing to be 
foremost in being applauded by the popular senti- 
ments of the masses, or advanced by favors of the 
crown, vied with the other in robbing and crushing 
America. As a generality, the ministers of the times 
were corrupt beyond comparison, were the leading 
members of parliament, and were nought but a fair 
representation of its moral qualities. But what were 
the moral qualities of this parliament? Let the histo- 
rian, who has studied the character of its acts more 
than any other, testify : "The administration of public 
affairs had degenerated into a system of patronage, 
which had money for its object, and was supported 
by the king from the love of authority. The govern- 
ment of England had more and more ceased to be the 
representative of the noble spirit of England. The 
twelfth parliament, which was now drawing to a close, 
had never been rivalled in its bold profligacy. Its 
predecessors had been corrupt." "But there never 
was a parliament so shameless in its corruption as this 

31 Bancboft's History of the United States, vol. 5, page 397. 



HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 469 

twelfth parliament, which virtually severed America 
from England. It had its votes ready for anybody 
that was minister, and for any measure that the min- 
ister of the day might propose. It gave an almost 
unanimous support to Pitt, when, for the last time in 
seventy years, the sovereign politics of England were 
on the side of liberty. It had a majority for Newcastle 
after he had ejected Pitt ; for Bute when he dismissed 
N"ewcastle; for Grenville when he became Bute's 
implacable foe; and for the slender capacity of the 
inexperienced Rockingham. The shadow of Chat- 
ham, after his desertion of the house, could sway its 
decision. When Charles Townshend, rebelling in the 
cabinet, seemed likely to become minister, it listened 
to him. When Townshend died, ]S"orth easily restored 
subordination. 

"Nor was it less impudent as to measures. It 
promoted the alliance with the king of Prussia, and 
deserted him; it protected the issue of general war- 
rants, and utterly condemned them. It was corrupt, 
and it knew itself to be corrupt, and made a jest of 
its own corruption. While it lasted, it was ready to 
bestow its favors on any minister or party ; and when 
it was gone, and had no more chance at prostitution, 
men wrote its epitaph as of the most scandalously 
abandoned body that England had ever known." ^ 2 Of 

S2 Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. 6, page 137. 



470 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the succeeding parliament, the historian says: "The 
thirteenth British parliament, the last which ever leg- 
islated over America, was returned. So infamous was 
the old house in public esteem, that one hundred and 
seventy of its members failed of being rechosen. But 
still corruption lost nothing of its effrontery; bor- 
oughs were sold openly, and votes purchased at 
advanced prices. The market value of a seat in 
parliament was four thousand pounds ; at which rate 
the whole venal house would have been bought for 
not much over two millions sterling, and a majority 
for not much over one million." ^^ 

The house of commons was constantly being ban- 
died abroad by Englishmen, who boasted of their 
liberty, as of a democratic nature, whereas it was so 
only in the manner of its deliberations after the reign 
of Henry YI, but did not come into constitutional 
existence by an impartial election of its members. It 
originated from the pockets of the rich, and not from 
the voice of the people. 

"Rotten boroughs were put up publicly for sale; 
Jews and Catholics were not allowed to sit in par- 
liament; but if they had cash enough, none could 
prevent them from purchasing rotten boroughs, and 
thereby exercising a direct influence on politics. In 
1814, Lady Montague wrote thus to her husband: 

33 Bancroft's History or the United States, vol. 6, page 147. 



HISTOBT OF THE DECLENSION. 471 

*Tlie best thing will be to entrust a certain sum to a 
good friend, and buy a small Cornwall borough.' In 
1761, the 'nabobs' entered the field as purchasers ; in 
1766, the borough of Sudbury was publicly put up 
for sale. Winchelsea, in 1784, had but three voters, 
and was the property of a rich nabob ; the borough 
of Bassiney, in Cornwall, had one voter only. A. bor- 
ough which had been swallowed up by the sea, still 
continued to be represented ; the owner of the beach 
on which it had stood rowed out in a boat with three 
voters, and there played out the electoral farce. In 
1790 there were thirty boroughs, with three hundred 
and seventy -five voters, which sent sixty members to 
the lower house — amongst them Tiverton, with its 
fourteen voters ; Tavistock, having only ten freehold- 
ers; and St. Michael's, with seven scot and lot 
voters, returned one member each." But "in 1790, 
five hundred towns, although possessing an indus- 
trial population, not unfrequently wealthy, remained 
unrepresented, from the simple fact that the rich 
merchants and manufacturers were not at the same 
time 'freeholders' in the country." ^^ 

Nor was the manner in which the house of com- 
mons came into existence in these degenerate days less 
fraudulent of the rights of the people in Scotland and 
Ireland than in England. "At an election at Bute, 

34 Dr. FisCHfiLii, pages 436 and 437. 



473 HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

not beyond tlie memory of man, only one person 
attended the meeting, except the sheriff and the 
returning officer. He, of course, took the chair, con- 
stituted the meeting, called over the roll of freehold- 
ers, answered to his own name, took the vote, as to 
the presses, and elected himself. He then moved and 
seconded his own nomination, put the question as to 
the vote, and was unanimously returned. None, of 
course, took the slightest part in the elections, which 
were usually conducted in some small room. The 
Scotch magnates nominated nearly all the Scotch 
members, and sold themselves with their proteges 
to the ministry of the day. In Ireland, two-thirds 
of the one hundred members were 'nominated' by 
some sixty influential patrons. The thoroughly aris- 
tocratic character of the lower house in the eighteenth 
century renders the striking sameness in its outward 
features somewhat explicable."'^ 

"Previous to the union with Ireland only about one 
hundred and thirty or one hundred and forty English 
members had been actually elected; as these members 
preserved the equipoise between the two aristocratic 
factions, a stout fight occurred in the places of elec- 
tion ; whenever one party sought to insure the return, 
bribery was the ready instrument at hand. * * * 

"In the eighteenth century bribery was the rule in 

%% Db. FischkMj, pages 430 and 431. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 473 

all boroughs dependent on the aristocracy; thus, in 
the election of 1754 very gross bribery prevailed and 
out of forty-two elections only one electoral contest 
actually took place ; still more lavish was the bribery 
resorted to in 1761. Foot, in one of his comedies, 
makes an elector to say: 'When I first became an 
elector, I could only get thirty guineas for a pair of 
knight's boots, whereas my neighbor, for just the 
same affair, had the luck to receive a fifty pound 
note for a pair of wash-leather breeches.' 

"In 1790 a gooseberry-bush was sold, during elec- 
tion, for eight hundred pounds; thus astutely were 
the penal enactments evaded. 

"In 1767 Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son, 'that rot-, 
ten boroughs were to be had for three thousand to five 
thousand pounds,' but they soon rose to nine thous- 
and pounds." ^'^ But the minor evil acts of candidates 
to gain admission into tne lower house were not less 
disreputable, for they were as much designed to pur- 
chase the favor of the voting masses as though they 
paid down a certain sum in gold. Doctor Fischell 
quotes Lord Jeffrey as saying, "In three and a half 
hours I knocked at six hundred and thirty-five doors, 
and shook four hundred and ninety-four people by 
the hand." And upon this particular head a disaf-* 
fected Englishman exclaims, "nothing is so common 



36 Dr. FischhiTiTi, page 429. 



474 HISTOEY OF TUE DECLENSION". 

as a candidate ! this familiarity has made the populace 
BO impertinent, they are all a purchasable and cor- 
rupt rabble."^' 

Of a body which had come into existence by vice 
and fraud, what could be expected but outrages on 
the legislative code ? If criminals become law-makers, 
their deliberations, without the shadow of a doubt, 
will correspond to their mental condition, and partake 
of a felonious character A.nd such was the true con- 
dition of several parliaments of Gfreat Britain, one 
hundred years after the colonies were planted and 
before the American revolt. The Americans, during 
the whole period of the political controversy, desired 
to be governed by constitutional law, but strenuously 
resisted piratical regulations. 

In the contemporary moralist, this state of things 
must have produced the melancholy reflection, that 
virtue was in great minority in a race once the noblest 
in modern Europe; that like the final operations of 
the living body, the moral faculties easily become 
incurable and mortal ; that in the great majority of the 
present parliament as in those and their generations 
which immediately preceded it, they had already 
imoldered to decay. The greatest exhibitions of 
I Roman valor sagacity and power were offered upon 

37 Dk. Fischell, page 432. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSIOJ^T. 475 

the grave of Roman liberties, for comparatively but 
a short period of time after Hannibal had ceased to 
breathe, the laws of the republic were trailed in the 
dust. In fifty-two or three years after the African 
chieftain had struck terror into the inhabitants of 
Rome by the energy of the sword, his native city 
and his people were no more. In quick succession 
to the termination of the Peloponnesian war, the inde- 
pendence of the Hellenic states was gone; the will, 
the welfare, the personal freedom, the very lives of the 
Greeks, were made dependent on the behests of a 
Macedonian prince. This analogy of decline and 
progress, in synchroniety, of various mental qualities 
in dissimilar governments, races and ages, was, per- 
haps, felt by Pitt, Camden, Conway, Barre and their 
colleagues, many of whom were among the most com- 
prehensive statesmen and debaters of the eighteenth 
century. Britain had arrived at the summit of all 
national glory, had become mistress of the seas and 
extended the blessings of an enlightened civilization, 
under constitutional laws, over nearly a fourth of the 
earth's population. But now, in presence of the 
"Grreat Commoner," to whom the empire principally 
owed its unparalleled fortune, in presence of him 
whose main aspirations in life had been to promote 
the interests of his country, and alleviate the sufferings 
of man, it appeared to be receding and taking up a 



476 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSIOK. 

position among the effete and worn-out monarcliies of 
a half civilized age. Chatham was approaching his 
fifty- seventh birth-day when the stamp act was passed, 
in bad health, and breaking more from the pressure of 
disease than the infirmity of years. His health was, 
indeed, gone, but his love for England and her laws 
was as bright as when he humbled the Bourbons and 
raised up Britain to be the most potent nation in 
Europe. Notwithstanding his great ability, his past 
services to his country, his acute sensibilities on ques- 
tions of right and wrong, touching the welfare of his 
countrymen, the parasites of despotism would not post- 
pone the burial of constitutional grandeur till the great 
man had ceased to be. He had long witnessed with 
pride the progress of his country, but was now forced 
to contemplate the humility of its morals and the 
decline of its power. With extreme anguish of mind, 
his penetrating intellect parted the veil, which usually 
obscures the future from mortal vision, and foresaw 
one branch of his race arrayed against the other in 
fraternal strife; he beheld the throne of the Bour- 
bons, endorsed by a polished and powerful nation, 
united with the weak and oppressed of his own 
kindred, language, laws and religion. The demo- 
cratic portion of the British legislature, within his 
memory, had degenerated into a farce, and become a 
foul receptacle in which were hatched the embryos of 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 477 

tyrannic measures. Supported by a misguided multi- 
tude, it had the might to crush the last hope of those 
who had been subjected to every misfortune among a 
wilderness of relentless foes. But amidst the suffer- 
ings which British arms would then be inflicting on 
the brave and injured, he saw that they had kindled 
the .spirit of revenge in an absolute prince, an ancient 
enemy, and the magnanimity of a people whose kind- 
lier qualities had not yet become hardened to the 
cruelties of man's more savage nature. He beheld 
his country issuing from the terrible conflict drenched 
in blood, dismembered, dishonored, broken in spirits 
and crushed in hopes, the scorn of the world ; public 
burdens increased by augmented debts, and the arbiter 
of Europe numbered among the subordinate if not 
among the fallen powers of the earth. These were 
more than adequate to press him into his grave, and 
if not the last, he was far from being the first who 
owed to his countrymen the sorrows of a broken heart. 
Although the glory of Britain had departed and 
gone, was, in two or three generations, lost to the world, 
it planted and unconsciously cultivated those immortal 
principles in the inhabitants of the New World, where 
it was uninfluenced by the corruptions which, nearly 
to completion, had twice decomposed them in the 
different tribes and principalities of Europe. The 
unjust measures which issued from the body of 



478 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

cormption, for such the commercial classes and the 
British parliament had become, produced their effects 
on the moral faculties of the Americans. Political 
acts of a government, which bear upon the interests 
of a portion of its people, when those acts partake 
the characteristics of injustice and fraud, never have 
failed, and never will fail, of producing an excited 
action in those faculties of the mind whose peculiar 
functions are to give birth to feelings of benevolence 
and justice. The effects correspond to the enormity 
of the acts. Such was the true condition of things 
between the east and the west. While those immortal 
faculties were in process of decay in Great Britain, 
they were in corresponding growth in America ; while 
they were being lost in the eastern branch of the Eng- 
lish race, they were being saved in the western. The 
manner of their death there, insured and nurtured 
their growth here, to a greater degree of vitality than 
had been known in Europe posterior to the days of 
Numa and of Cincinattus, and that on the whole, 
although their tendency had been downward more 
than upward, they had reached, in the Americans, a 
higher elevation than had existed in the world for two 
thousand years. 

In the noble inhabitants of Virginia and the Caro- 
linas, it is observable that by the year 1775 there had 
been a marvelous change, if not an entire creation of 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 479 

character. From aristocratic they had become demo- 
cratic in feeling ; from tenacious fondness for clinging 
to perverted tastes and fashions of an old civilization 
now passing away, they, with all that elegance of 
bearing which ever distinguished the cultivated 
southerner, came forward with the sons of the more 
northern colonies and inaugurated the new civilization 
upon the ruins of the passing one. To the uncon- 
stitutional acts of the British oligarchy they opposed 
no repulsive boasting, no daring disposition ; none of 
those types of depravity which are common to the 
ruffian warrior and coarse politician found a repository 
in the classical minds which composed the represen- 
tative material of these southern colonists. Com- 
bining the abilities and mildness of Melancthon with 
the heroic qualities of Luther, they gave no exhi- 
bitions of bravado, but resisted the piratical claims of 
the British parliament with a true courtesy and an 
undiminishable firmness. Nothing but justice was 
asked, and that only, to all British subjects of the 
west, would be received. The moral faculties, having 
reached a potency over the mind unparalleled in the 
Christian era, would not permit their possessors to 
be degraded, bribed, swerved, influenced nor ensnared. 
Nor was this growth of the primitive moral elements 
less remarkable in the inhabitants of the northern 
than in those of the southern colonies. The former, in 



480 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

the time of the early settlement of the country, were 
more gloomy in their spiritual belief, and less royalist 
in sentiment. The persistent efforts of Samuel Adams 
and James Otis, toward the close of this period of 
moral culture, fanned the flames of indignation in 
the masses of the Americans ; and to no small degree 
sharpened and pointed the minds and memories of 
British statesmen on the constitutional laws of the 
empire. 

The breaking out of hostilities into belligerent acts 
was but another form of the old antagonism between 
virtue, bravery and poverty on the one hand, and the 
principles of piracy merged in a visible hypocrisy on 
the other. It was but a continuation of the struggle 
between these combatants of the internal world. The 
sympathies of a majority of the nations on the eastern 
continent were enlisted on the side of the former, Brit- 
ain being both feared and hated by every nation in the 
world. Among them all she had not a single friend. 
The more the aristocracy of the mother country had 
attempted to curtail the increasing power of the new 
and little understood rising empire of America, the 
more the latter extended its principles over the earth, 
taking root in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, 
and even in the British isles themselves. The long 
looked-for aurora of a new dispensation, "the good 
time coming," had at last made itself visible to the 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 481 

snflfering millions. The doctrines of those mental 
faculties, which had the last half of their restoration 
in the "IS'ew World," had spread out, like the cloud 
seen by Elijah from Mount Carmel, until they covered 
the whole horizon of the political world, threatening 
the transposition of the same principles to the decaying 
thrones of European monarchies. Their practical 
operations finally swept the absolute government of 
the Bourbons and its dependent and corrupt aristoc- 
racy out of existence, and, amid the storms of fury, 
madness and folly to which their principles had been 
traduced, the lives of many noble men and women, 
are to be regretted, the sorrowful circumstances sur- 
rounding their melancholy fate wringing tears from 
the eyes of the better portion of mankind. The "gray 
powers of the old world" now for the first time felt 
the insecurity of their positions, that they were as 
uncertain as volcanic eruptions. They began feebly 
to comprehend that in view only of immediate conse- 
quences, a justice as inevitable as inexorable was sure 
to overtake and punish the prince as the pauper. For 
eighteen centuries, the warning "flee from the wrath to 
come" had not been pronounced in more unmistakable 
terms, or with more ominous significance. Those 
nations ruled by princes of weak understandings, of 
conceited and despotic feelings, thoroughly disciplined 
in the trade of reducing their subjects to bondage, 

81 



482 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

starvation and death, although they hated Britain, 
looked upon every American as a mortal enemy to 
their existence. 

From soon after the settlement of the colonies to 
the breaking out of political hostilities, all the colonies 
had opposed the farther introduction of slaves among 
them, and frequently petitioned the imperial govern- 
ment to put an end to the trade. ^ ^ They looked upon 
the bondage of one human being to another as a viola- 
tion of natural and divine law, a heinous crime against 
God and man. ^^ But as stealing negroes in Africa 
and selling them as slaves to western planters was a 
lucrative business to English merchants, in harmony 

38 See Hinton's United States, vol. 1; Bancroft's History of the 
United States, vols. 4 and 5 ; and History of ^Slavery in the Colonies 
chap. 31. 

39 The following is no more than a moderate representation of the feel- 
ings existing in nearly all the people of the several provinces : " In the year 
1773, a disposition favorable to the oppressed Africans became very generally 
manifest in some of the American provinces. The house of burgesses of Vir- 
ginia even presented a petition to the king, beseeching his majesty to remove 
all those restraints on his governors of that colony, which inhibited their 
assent to such laws as might check that inhuman and impolitic commerce, the 
slave-trade: and it is remarkable that the refusal of the British government 
to permit tho colonists to exclude slaves from among them by law, was 
enumerated afterward among the public reasons for separating from the 
mother country. 

"In allusion to the fact just stated, Mr. Jefferson, in his draft of the 
Declaration of Independence, said; 'He '[the king of England]' has waged 
civil war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life 
and liberty, in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him ; cap- 
tivating and carrying them into another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable 
death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium 
of infldel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain." — 
Blake's History of Slavery, page 177. 



HISTOKY OF TUE DECLENSION. 483 

with their feelings of avarice, the royal will forced the 
slaveholders to submit. The Americans had two dis- 
tinct views in which they contemplated the case ; the 
first and principal reason, as already suggested, and 
the second, that trouble might be apprehended from 
a rising of the blacks should they greatly outnumber 
the whites. The former was the most important objec- 
tion, bearing strongest upon their feelings, and they 
looked forward to the time when the humanities of 
the mother country would predominate over its vices, 
enabling the master to emancipate his slaves, as the 
condition of their tenure was a too repulsive and 
degenerate form of an odious feudalism.*" But in 
less than half a century from 1772, it is observable 
that these sentiments respecting human slavery, in 
certain sections of the country, had become reversed. 
From a desire to abolish it as an enormity at the 
first part of that period, at the last there appeared 
a disposition to bind it more firmly and promote its 
extension.** 

After the passage of the act, in 1808, to prohibit the 



40 Consult evidence, compiled by Mr. Helper, of the feelings of Washing- 
ton, of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Henry, Randolph and others of the south ; 
and of Dr. Franklin, Hamilton, Jay, Adams and others of the north. Impend- 
ing Crisis, eh. 3 and 4 ; also Blake's History of Slavery, oh. 21. 

41 As to this change in the character of the Southern states on this ques- 
tion, see the struggle which they maintained in congress in 1819-30, to procure 
the admission of Missouri territory Into the union with a slave constitution. 
American Statesman, ch. 23 : more especially Blake's HIStory of Slavery 
ch. 24, Id which all the violent debates are detailed la f ulli 



484 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

importation of Africans from abroad into tlie United 
States, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas became 
tbe great marts from whicli tbe settlers of the south- 
western states and territories were supplied. ^^ The 
policy of the British government had been to subject 
one entire people to servitude by the acts of a spu- 
rious legislature, by which means, after having first 
of all introduced and promoted African slavery 
among them, she could easily flatter the planter that 
he was lord, while the truth was that his condition 
became worse than that of his slaves ; for besides 
being without political rightSj and thus himself a' 
serf, he, in time, also entered into more repulsive 
bondage to his own evil passions, by the evil effects 
which slavery has never failed to produce upon the 
master.* 2 

But after the twenty -fifth of September, 1783, when 
the independence of the United States of America was 

4S " The settlement of the so'.ithwest proceeded rapidly after the war," 
[war of 1812.] The great profits derived from the cultivation of cotton kept the 
Afncan slave-trade alive in spite of the prohibitory laws. The domestic slave- 
trade increased, and "Washington became a great resort of the traders, who 
were engaged in buying up slaves in Maryland and Virginia for transportation 
to the southwest. Governor Williams, of South Carolina, In a message to the 
legislature, denounced 'this remorseless and merciless traflQc, this ceaseless 
dragging along the street of a crowd of suffering victims to minister to insatia- 
ble avarice.' This which he condemned was the domestic slave-trade/'— 
Blake's History of Slavery, pages 449 and 450. 

43 In the debates at the time of the adoption of the federal constitution 
in convention, Mr. Mason, of Virginia, and most others of that body, held sim- 
ilar views. In the course of the debate on the three-flfths representative 
clause, Mr Mason said ' Slavery discourages arts and manufactories. The 
poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They produce a pernicioua 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 485 

acknowledged by ttie British crown at Paris, there 
were such modifications in the external circumstances 
of the slave-holder as, in years, to prove fatal to his 
freedom, although they did not efiect his political 
independence. The invention of the spinning jenny 
in 1796, by Hargrave, and soon after, that of the gin, 
increased the demands for cotton in England and also 
in the rest of Europe. Cotton goods, subsequent to 
these great inventions, were manufactured with greater 
rapidity, and of course in much larger quantities. The 
goods fell in price, and were more freely used by all. 
The scarcity of the raw material, caused, first by the 
reduction in the price of cotton goods, and second, by 
its more extensive use in consequence of the first, 
multiplied the amount of skilled and agricultural 
labor which had formerly existed for its production. 
As the consumption of the product became greater, 
the price of the raw material was enhanced. This 
addressed itself to the acquisitive feelings of the plant- 
ers of America and both the Indies, the sources from 
which manufacturers drew their supplies. As the his- 
tory of all nations testifies, there is but one step from 
a proper degree of acquisitiveness to its degenerate 

effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring 
the judgment of heaven on a country. He lamented that some of our eastern 
brethren, from a lust of gain, had embarked in this nefarious traflBc. He held 
it essential, in every point of view, that the general government should have 
power to prevent the increase of slavery."— Blake's History of Slatery, 
page 397. 



486 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

form, avaricioiisness. Although this descent must be 
gradual, by certain combinations of external circum- 
stances it may be effected in a single generation. 

The only manner by which the morals of a state 
can be studied, with any prospect of arriving at a tol- 
erable solution of its metaphysical status, at a given 
period, is, in our opinion, by contemplating the events 
and acts of the people comprising that state in suc- 
cessive steps up to that given period from the era in 
which it was founded, or by contrasting the move- 
ments of the masses on different questions, at or about 
the time of political organization, to the conduct of 
the nation at an age when tlie moral faculties of 
mind present such appearances as warrant the belief 
that they have suffered a partial or a total overthrow. 

As vice is in antagonism with virtue, so is slavery 
with freedom. The one, in both cases, is the opposite 
of the other. Both cannot exist in harmony, or to an 
equal degree, long among a people. The one, by its 
very nature, will first subordinate and then extinguish 
all controlling influence of the other. Accoi'dingly, 
we find, at two different periods, not very remote from 
each other, in the history of this country, tliat the 
propensities and moral sentiments were almost in con- 
tinual conflict over the question of slavery. Before, at 
the time of, and immediately subsequent to, the days of 
the revolution, the very great majority of the people of 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 487 

the federal states were firmly opposed to its existence. 
But in 1820, thirty-seven years after the complete estab- 
lishment of our independence, as has been observed, 
these sentiments in the majority had become as much 
reversed. The fathers of the republic, in whose wis- 
dom and virtue the people placed sufficient confidence 
to elect them as their representatives in all political bod- 
ies assembled in the dominions prior and subsequent 
to the birth of freedom, were one and all positively 
opposed to slavery. They were the chosen represent- 
atives of the people on questions of ethics, for this 
was the main point on which all controversies had 
been maintained between the two countries for at 
least one hundred and fifty years. And what were 
the expressed sentiments of these great advocates 
of freedom? "I never mean, unless some particular 
circumstances should compel me to it, to possess 
another slave by purchase ; it being among my first 
wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery, 
in this country, may be abolished by law."** "I 
can only say, that there is not a man living who 
wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted 
for the abolition of it. But there is only one proper 
and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, 
and that is by legislative authority ; and this, so far 
as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting."** 

44 Letter of George Washington to J. F. Mercer, September 9, 1786. 

45 Letter of George Washington to Hobert Morris, April Vi, 1786. 



488 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

"The scheme, my dear marquis, which yon propose 
as a precedent, to encourage the emancipation of the 
black people in this country from the state of bondage 
in which they are held, is a striking evidence of the 
benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to join 
you in so laudable a work ; but will defer going into 
detail of the business till I have the pleasure of seeing 
you." * ^ That a gradual emancipation of slavery was, 
after the revolution, the predominant feeling of the 
greater part of the inhabitants of Maryland and Vir- 
ginia, appears from the following: "There are in 
Pennsylvania laws for the gradual abolition of slav- 
ery, which neither Virginia nor Maryland have at 
present, but which nothing is more certain than they 
must have, and at a period not remote."*'' 

The author of the Declaration of Independence 
says: "There must doubtless be an unhappy influ- 
ence on the manners of our people, produced by the 
existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce 
between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the 
most boisterous passions — the most unremitting des- 
potism on the one part, and degrading submission on 
the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate 
it, for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the 
germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his 



46 Letter of George Washington to De Lafayette, April 15, 1783. 

47 Letter of George Wasliington to Sir John Sinclair. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 489 

grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If 
a parent could find no motive, either in his philan- 
thropy or his self-love, restraining the intemperance of 
passion toward his slave, it should always be a suffi- 
cient one that his child is present. But generally it is 
not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, 
catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs 
in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to the 
worst of passions; and, thus nursed, educated, and 
daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it 
with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy 
who can retain his manners and morals undepraved 
by such circumstances. And with what execration 
should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting 
one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights 
of the other, transforms those into despots and these 
into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and 
the amor patricB of the other ; for if a slave can have 
a country in this world, it must be any other in prefer- 
ence to that in which he was born to live and labor 
for another ; in which he must lock up the faculties of 
his nature, contribute, as far as depends on his indi- 
vidual endeavors, to the evanishment of the human 
race, or entail his own miserable condition on the 
endless generations proceeding from him. With the 
morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed ; 
for, in a warm climate, no man vdll labor for himself 



490 • HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

who can make another labor for him. This is so true, 
that of the proprietors of slaves a very small propor- 
tion, indeed, are ever seen to labor. And can the 
liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have 
removed their only firm basis ? " * * '^' "Indeed, 
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is 
just; that this justice cannot sleep forever."*^ And, 
again, in the convention of 1774, of Virginia, Jefferson 
further denounced slavery and the British government 
for having introduced and licensed tlie African slave 
trade. The following shows that he represented the 
sentiments of the masses of his state on the question 
of slavery when he said: "The abolition of domestic 
slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colo- 
nies, where it was iinhappily introduced in their infant 
state," *^ That the feelings of Jefferson were those of 
the majority of the colonists, would appear from the 
original draft of the Declaration of Independence. 
Although this clause was rejected by the convention, 
it was doubtless done because it was irrelevant to the 
cause of the colonists, being in the nature of an indict- 
ment of George III for high crimes and misdemeanors 
committed against people nowise politically connected 
with Americans. He says: "He has waged cruel war 
against human nature itself, violating its most sacred 

48 Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, pages 39 and 40, 

49 Helper's Impending Crisis, page 196. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 491 

rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant 
people who never offended him, captivating and carry- 
ing them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to 
incur miserable death in their transportation thither. 
This jiiratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel pow- 
ers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. 
Determined to keep a market where men should be 
bought and sold, he has at length prostituted his 
negative for suppressing any attempt to prohibit and 
restrain this execrable commerce."^" And, "North- 
ward of the Chesapeake, you may find, here and there, 
an opponent of your doctrine," [emancipation,] "as 
you may find, here and there, a robber and murderer ; 
but in no great number. Emancipation is put into 
such a train, that in a few years there will be no slaves 
northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find 
such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity 
as in Virginia. This is the next state to which we may 
turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in 
conflict with avarice and oppression, a conflict wherein 
the sacred side is gaining daily recruits.""^ 

Mr. Madison published similar views when he said : 
"The dictates of humanity, the principles of the peo- 
ple, the national safety and happiness, and prudent 
policy, require it of us. It is hoped that by expressing 

50 Helper's Impending Crisis, page 196. 

51 Ibid. 



492 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

a national disapprobation of the trade, we may destroy 
it, and save our country from reproaches, and our 
posterity from the imbecility ever attendant on a 
country filled with slaves." And "it is wrong to 
admit into the constitution the idea that there can 
be property in man." 

"In the thirty-ninth number of The Federalist^ he 
says : 'The first question that offers itself is, whether 
the general form and aspect of the government be 
strictly republican. It is evident that no other form 
would be reconcilable with the genius of the American 
people, and with the fundamental principles of the 
revolution, or with that honorable determination which 
animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our 
political experiments on the capacity of mankind for 
self-government.' And in the federal convention he 
thought that, ' in the third, where slavery exists, the 
republican theory becomes still more fallacious.' On 
another occasion, ' We have seen the mere distinction 
of color made, in the most enlightened period of time, 
a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exer- 
cised by man over man.' 

" In a speech in the Virginia convention, Mr. Mon- 
roe said : ' We have found that this evil ' [slavery] 
'has preyed upon the very vitals of the union, and 
has been prejudicial to all the states, in which it has 
existed.' 



HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 493 

**The eloquent Patrick Henry says, in a letter dated 
January 18, 1773 : ' Is it not a little surprising that 
the professors of Christianity, whose chief excellence 
consists in softening the human heart, in cherishing 
and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a 
practice so totally repugnant to the first impressions 
of right and wrong? What adds to the wonder is, 
that this abominable practice has been introduced in 
the most enlightened ages. Times that seem to have 
pretensions to boast of high improvements in the arts 
and sciences, and refined morality, have brought into 
general use, and guarded by many laws, a species of 
violence and tyranny which our more rude and bar- 
barous, but more honest, ancestors detested. Is it not 
amazing that at a time when the rights of humanity 
are defined and understood with precision, in a country 
above all others fond of liberty — that in such an age 
and in such a country, we find men professing a relig- 
ion the most mild, humane, gentle, and generous, 
adopting such a principle, as repugnant to humanity 
as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to 
liberty? Every thinking, honest man rejects it in 
speculation. How free in practice from conscientious 
motives ! Would any one believe that I am master of 
slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by 
the general inconvenience of living here without them. 
I will not, I cannot justify it. However culpable my 



494 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

conduct, I will so far pay my devoir to virtue as to 
own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and 
lament my want of conformity to them. I believe a 
time will come when an opportunity will be offered to 
abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we can do is 
to improve it if it happens in our day ; if not, let us 
transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, 
a pity for their unhappy lot, and an abhorrence for 
slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished for reforma- 
tion to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with 
lenity. It is the furthest advance we can make toward 
justice. It is a debt we owe to the purity of our relig- 
ion, to show that it is at variance with that law which 
warrants slavery.' 

" 'It would rejoice my very soul, that every one of 
my fellow beings was emancipated. We ought to 
lament and deplore the necessity of holding our feUow 
men in bondage. Believe me, I shall honor the Quak- 
ers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery.' " 

The feelings of John Randolph, of Roanoke, were 
not less opposed to the enormities of slavery. 

"'With unfeigned respect and regard, and as sin- 
cere a deprecation on the extension of slavery and its 
horrors, as any other man, be him whom he may, I 
am your friend in the literal sense of that much 
abused word. I say much abused, because it is 
applied to the leagues of vice and avarice and 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 496 

ambition, instead of good will toward man from love 
of Him who is the Prince of Peace.' And in congress, 
'Sir, I envy neither the heart nor the head of that 
man from the north who rises here to defend slavery 
on principle.' 

"In the debates of the North Carolina convention, 
Mr. Iredell, afterward a judge of the United States 
supreme court, said : ' W hen the entire abolition of 
slavery takes place, it will be an event which must be 
pleasing to every generous mind and every friend of 
human nature.'" 

In the house of delegates of Maryland, in 1789, 
WiUiam Pinkney denounced slavery and spoke for its 
abolition in the following terms: "Iniquitous and 
most dishonorable to Maryland, is that dreary system 
of partial bondage which her laws have hitherto sup- 
ported with a solicitude worthy of a better object, and 
her citizens by their practice countenanced. Founded 
in a disgraceful traffic, to which the parent country 
lent its fostering aid, from motives of interest, but 
which even she could have disdained to encourage, 
had England' been the destined mart of such inhuman 
merchandise, its continuance is as shameful as its 
origin. 

"I have no hope that the stream of general liberty 
will forever flow unpolluted through the mire of par- 
tial bondage, or that they who have been habituated 



496 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

to lord it over others, will not, in time, become base 
enough to let others lord it over them. If they resist, 
it -vvdll be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of 
principle." 

In the state of Virginia, there were societies formed 
for the abolition of slavery. One of them addressed 
congress, in 1791, in the following language: "Your 
memorialists, fully aware that righteousness exalteth 
a nation, and that slavery is not only an odious degra- 
dation, but an outrageous violation of one of the most 
essential rights of human nature, and utterly repug- 
nant to the precepts of the gospel, which breathes 
'peace on earth and good will to men,' lament that 
a practice so inconsistent with true policy and the 
inalienable rights of men, should subsist in so 
enlightened an age, and among a people professing 
that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to 
freedom." 

In 1773, Georgia was equally opposed to the suffer- 
ance of slavery, for "*in a letter to Granville Sharp, 
dated October 13, 1776, General Oglethorpe says : ' We 
(the settlers of the territory) determined not to suffer 
slavery there. But the slave merchants and their 
adherents occasioned us not only much trouble, but 
at last got the then government to favor them. We 
would not suffer slavery, (which is against the gos- 
pel, as well as the fundamental law of England,) to 



HISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION 497 

be authorized under our authority; we refused, as 
trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid 
crime. The government, finding the trustees resolved 
firmly not to concur with what they believed unjust, 
took away the charter by which no law could be 
passed without our consent.' " 

And "the representatives of the extensive district 
of Darien, in the colony of Greorgia, in 1775, adopted 
the following : 

'"5. To show the world that we are not influenced 
by any contracted or interested motives, but a general 
philanthropy for all mankind, of whatever climate, 
language or complexion, we hereby declare our disap- 
probation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of 
slavery in America, (however the uncultivated state of 
our country or other specious arguments may plead 
for it,) a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and 
highly dangerous to our liberties, (as well as lives,) 
debasing part of our fellow creatures below men, and 
corrupting the virtue and morals of the rest ; and is 
laying the basis of that liberty we contend for, (and 
which we pray the Almighty to continue to the latest 
posterity,) upon a very wrong foundation. We there- 
fore resolve, at all times, to use our utmost endeavors 
for the manumission of our slaves in this colony upon 
the most safe and equitable footing for the masters 
and themselves.'" 

32 



498 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

"In 1790, in the name and on behalf of this society," 
[the abolition society of Pennsylvania,] "Dr. Franklin, 
who was then within a few months of the close of his 
life, drafted a memorial to the senate and house of 
representatives of the United States, in which he said : 
' Your memorialists, particularly engaged in attending 
to the distresses arising from slavery, believe it to be 
their indispensable duty to present this subject to 
your notice. They have observed, with real satisfac- 
tion, that many important and salutary powers are 
vested in you, for promoting the welfare and securing 
the blessings of liberty to the people of the United 
States, and as they conceive that these blessings ought 
rightfully to be administered, without distinction of 
color, to all description of people, so they indulge 
themselves in the pleasing expectation that nothing 
which can be done for the relief of the unhappy objects 
of their care, will be either omitted or delayed. 

" 'From a persuasion that equal liberty was origin- 
ally the portion, and is still the birthright, of all men, 
and influenced by the strong ties of humanity and the 
principles of their institution, your memorialists con- 
ceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavors 
to loosen the bonds of slavery, and promote a gen- 
eral enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under 
these impressions, they earnestly entreat your atten- 
tion to the subject of slavery ; that you will be 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 499 

pleased to conntenance the restoration to liberty of 
those unhappy men, who, alone, in this land of free- 
dom, are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, 
amid the general joy of surrounding freemen, are 
groaning in servile subjection ; that yon will devise 
means for removing this inconsistency of character 
from the American people ; that you will promote 
mercy and justice toward this distressed race ; and 
that you will step to the very verge of the power 
vested in you, for discouraging every species of traffic 
in the persons of our fellow men.'" "And," says 
Franklin, "slavery is an atrocious debasement of 
human nature." 

In the year 1774, Alexander Hamilton thought that 
"Fundamental of all your errors, sophisms and false 
reasonings, is a total ignorance of the natural rights of 
mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with 
these, you could never entertain a thought that all 
men are not, by nature, entitled to equal privileges. 
You would be convinced that natural liberty is the 
gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, 
and that civil liberty is founded on that." 

The feelings of John Jay were in abhorrence of it. 
He claimed that "till America comes into this meas- 
ure," [the abolition of slavery,] "her prayers to 
Heaven will be impious. This is a strong expres- 
sion, but it is just. I believe that Grod governs the 



500 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

world, and I believe it to be a maxim of His, as in onr 
conrts, that those who ask for equity ought to do it." 

General Warren, who fell at the battle of Bunker 
Hill, said: "that personal freedom is the natural 
right of every man, and that property, or an exclu- 
sive right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired 
by his own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are 
truths that common sense has placed beyond the 
reach of contradiction. And no man, or body of 
men, can, without being guilty of flagrant injustice, 
claim a right to dispose of the persons or acquisi- 
tions of any other man or body of men, unless it 
can be proved that such a right has arisen from some 
compact between the parties, in which it has been 
explicitly and freely granted." 

But why occupy space upon this evidence, when it 
is well known to every intelligent person in this coun- 
try that the entire northern states, and, with very few 
exceptions, those of the south, were, at the time of the 
revolution, decidedly opposed to slavery, as being in 
repugnance to their feelings of right. Mr. Helper, 
who has canvassed the opinions of the early Ameri- 
cans on this subject probably as much as any other 
man, remarks: "Volumes upon volumes might be 
filled with extracts similar to the above, from the 
works of the deceased statesmen and sages of the 
north, who, while living, proved themselves equal to 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 501 

the task of exterminating from their own states the 
fnatchless curse of human slavery. ^^ 

"Massachusetts had abolished slavery. Pennsylva- 
nia (1780) adopted a gradual system of emancipation. 
Also Connecticut, Rhode Island and IS'ew Hampshire. 
In ISTew York, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and 
Virginia, further importation was prohibited. * * * 
In Maryland and Virginia all restriction on emancipa- 
tion was removed, and many of the most distinguished 
citizens were for entire emancipation. Virginia and 
Maryland were hostile to slavery, and South Carolina 
and G-eorgia its advocates. 

"In 1774, the first general congress resolved against 
the slave-trade. 

"In 1785, an abolition society was organized at 
New York. 

"Till 1804, even South Carolina passed acts. prohib- 
iting the slave-trade. 

"In 1784, a majority of six states to three, and six- 
teen members to seven, was for abolishing slavery after 
1800, in the whole of the territories. This proposition 
was, ' that after the year 1800, there shall be neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said 
states, otherwise than in punishment of crimes,' etc."^^ 

In seven of the original states, and one^* admitted 

52 Helper's Impending Crisis. 

53 The Making of the American Nation, pages 279 and 380. See, also, 
BIiAke's History of SI^A-VKRT, ch. 22 and 23. 

54 Vermont was admitted as a state in 1791. 



502 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

into the union almost immediately after the revolution, 
the moral sentiments were soon enabled to expunge 
the law of slavery from the legislative code. But six 
out of thirteen continued in the same condition in 
which they were placed by the piracies of the previous 
century. The first propositions of emancipation in 
the north were met with as much bitterness as they 
encountered in the south. But the sentiments of the 
majority of all the different states, except South Caro- 
lina and Georgia, at the period of the revolution, were 
opposed to the institution. 

From what can be gathered by the movements of 
the masses in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and North 
Carolina, from agitation of slavery, in these early days 
of their national existence, we may with fairness con- 
clude, that the moral faculties of the inhabitants had 
become as nearly restored to a condition of normality, 
as they were in those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
and the other states of the north. But after the excit- 
ing causes of the revolution had passed away, and the 
attention of the people had become released from its 
close vigilance over the youthful form of liberty, the 
mental faculties of the people, in the two different 
sections of the union, by dissimilar causes, were forced 
to assume diverse directions, culminating in the pro- 
duction of contradistinguished characteristics. 

In 1790, at the taking of the first census, the slave 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 603 

popnlation of the states of Maryland, Delaware, Yir- 
ginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, amounted to six 
hundred and forty-two thousand, two hundred and 
eighty, while in the original states of the north it was 
only twenty-eight thousand, nine hundred and forty- 
seven. But in 1820, when Missouri was admitted into 
the union, the slaves of the former had increased to 
the number of three millions, twenty-eight thousand 
and twenty-four, while the same in the latter had 
diminished to eighteen thousand and one. The old 
revolutionary states of the north had diminished the 
number of their slaves more than thirty-three and a 
third per centum, while the southern states had more 
than quadrupled theirs. "The increase in Virginia 
for the last decade," [from 1810 to 1820,] "had been 
only eight per centum ; in North Carolina twenty-one, 
and in South Carolina thirty-one per centum. The 
rapid settlement of the southwest had stimulated the 
domestic slave-trade, and the market was supplied 
chiefly from Maryland and Virginia, which accounts 
for the decrease in the former, and the small increase 
in the latter, state. Slavery in Tennessee had increased 
seventy-nine per centum; in Mississippi ninety-two, 
and in Louisiana ninety-nine per centum." ^^ 

From the revolutionary states of the south much of 
the increase in slave population had, by the year 1820, 

5S Blake's History of Slavery, ch. 27, page 498. 



504: HISTORY OF THE DECLEI^SION. 

been forced westward to the banks of the Mississippi, 
and northward to the shores of the Ohio river ; so that 
the vast expanse of land lying between the former and 
the Atlantic ocean, and extending from the Ohio river 
to the gulf of Mexico, territory larger than the British 
isles, France and Germany combined, was devoted, by 
the controlling influence which slavery had acquired 
in the government, to this "matchless curse." 

In attempting to discuss the various effects which 
slavery tends to produce in demoralization of a free 
people in proximity to its locality, one is confounded 
by its obvious simplicity. We will, therefore, omit 
it, as of this every intelligent reader must be fully 
informed. All that is here sought to be understood is 
the stimulation which the institution affords to work 
an increased growth of certain mental faculties, the 
permutated states of which give rise to the different 
mental phenomena, which have been exhibited in all 
ages, except in man's primitive condition, and which 
we now everywhere behold. 

It is indisputably observable that slavery generates 
feelings of bitterness, hatred and revenge in a people 
who hold their fellow men in bondage. By the 
same causes they are rendered pugnacious and tyran- 
nical ; given to command from childhood to old age, 
it steadily produces more fatal effects in the owner 
than in his bondman. The latter submits to arbitrary 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 505 

dictation, the former to his vilest passions. With 
increase of time, under the same inflnences, there is 
a continual growth in those propensities which inflict 
cruelty and wrong upon the slave. The exhibition of 
these elements most frequently excite corresponding 
feelings in those against whom they are directed, 
which, by their expression, stimulates those of the 
former to more active conditions. Habituated to wit- 
ness the separation of families, the feelings of compas- 
sion are rendered nugatory, and the heart becomes 
callous to the sufferings of others. The holder is 
continually at war with himself, the faculties, in his 
case as in all others when elevated to supremacy, 
assuming conditions that are self-destructive. Slav- 
ery generates licentiousness, theft, robbery and mur- 
der. It generates indolence, ignorance, falsehood, 
perjury and effeminacy; it is the cradle in which 
are nurtured all the vices of the voluptuary. In 
feict, it is a fertilizer of every evil which is, or ever 
has been, known in the world. It has long been con- 
sidered that "it was born of hell," to be "a heU," a 
"monstrous institution," a "matchless curse," and 
"the sum of all villainies." 

The nature of the whole institution is inimical to 
virtue, although the latter may reside in the midst of 
slavery. It raises the propensities above the moral 
sentiments, giving them control of the individnaL 



506 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

This condition, rending and decomposing tlie latter 
feelings in tlie great majorities of the slave states, soon 
left them in complete ruins, the animal nature being 
the only element which subsequently gave impulsion 
to individual character and political ambition. Indo- 
lence begets desire for sport and entertainment, which, 
again, demand means to supply gratification. By 
the continued application of the same objects to the 
same faculties, those affective feelings upon which 
they act are gradually developed to a higher state 
than that which they held before the culture began. 
The greater the development of those faculties, the 
greater the desire of action in those faculties, and 
although they may not be carried to the excess of 
their own strength, they are almost invariably found 
to be in excessive contravention of the moral senti- 
ments. 

In all countries morality is indigenous with the 
people, but in a land where slavery exists it soon 
becomes exotic. The golden rule is abated in all 
its features, justice a thing not desired, the "terms 
slavery and right contradicting and excluding each 
other." It is as much opposed to the material 
prosperity of a nation as to the virtue of its citi- 
zens, substituting poverty for wealth. ^^ A land 

s6 The comparison made by Mr. Helper very well Illustrates the influence 
of slavery upon the wealth of nations. He says that " in 1790, when the first 
census was taken. New York contained 340,130 inhabitants; at the same time 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 607 

in which, injnstice is sovereign in administration, is 
not only checked in its advancement in civilization, 
but is inevitably forced back of those who hold a 
higher moral position. Vice tends to prostrate the 
judicial, the political, the religious, the social, and the 
pecuniary interests of a people. Thus while those 
states which emancipated their slaves and extended 
full political privileges to all, were prospered to an 
unparalleled degree, others, which adhered to the 
old system of wrong, fell far behind the contempo- 
raries of their years in possessing themselves of 



the population of Virginia was 748,308, being more than twice the number of 
New York. Just sixty years afterward, as we learn from the census of 1850, 
New York had a population of 3,097,394, while that of Virginia was only 1,421,661, 
being less than half the number of New York I In 1791, the exports of New 
York amounted to $2,505,465; the exports of Virginia amounted to $3,130,865. 
In 1852, the exports of New York amounted to $87,484,456 ; the exports of Vir- 
ginia, during same year, amounted to only $2,724,657. In 1790, the imports of 
New York and Virginia were nearly equal; in 1853, the imports of New York 
amounted to the enormous sum of $173,270,999; while those of Virginia, for 
the same period, amounted to the pitiful sum of only $899,004. In 1850, the 
products of manufactures, mining and the mechanic arts in New York 
amounted to $237,597,249; those of Virginia to only $28,705,387. At the taking 
of the last census, the value of real and personal property in Virginia, includ- 
ing negroes, was $391,646,438; that of New York, exclusive of any monetary 
valuation of human beings, was $1,080,309,216. 

"In August, 1856, the real and personal estate assessed in the city of New 
York amounted in valuation to $511,740,491, showing that New York city alone 
is worth Tar more than the whole state of Virginia." * * * " The cash value 
of all the farms, farming implements and machinery, in Virginia, in 1850, was 
$223,423,315; the value of the same in New York, in the same year, was 
$576,631 568."— Impending Crisis, pages 12, 13 and 14. 

Governor Wise said that the "records of former days show that at a 
period not very remote, Virginia stood pre-eminently the first commercial 
state in the union; when her commerce exceeded in amount that of all the 
New England states combined ; when the city of Norfolk owned more than 
one hundred trading ships, and her direct foreign trade exceeded that of the 
city of New York, now the emporium of the north."— Ibid. 



608 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

those advantages which are derivable from a pro- 
gressive civilization. ' "* 

While the northern siates got rid of some of the 
external causes of moral degeneracy, the southern 
not only clung with a pertinacious policy to the old 
system, but multiplied the complexity of a condition 
already untenable, by the increase of slavery. That the 
latter should have remained thirty years, a whole gen- 
eration, without reversal of moral sentiment, without 
a change from conscientious scruples against slavery, 
which they held in 1790, to its endorsement in 1820, 
would have been almost miraculous. And accordingly 
they fell willing victims to the delusive flatteries of this 
system of wrong. From a conscientious denunciation 
of slavery in 1790, as a "crying evil," in 1820 it became 
an object of the most tender care. Immediately after 
the close of the revolution, they publicly urged its 
gradual emancipation in states where it existed, but 
when Missouri applied for admission into the confed- 
eration, they threatened a dissolution of the union if 

57 It has been the opinion of many residing in the south, that slavery has 
not only suppressed the civilization of the people, but has produced a retro- 
gression. Jamt s G. Blrney, in 1844, vrhen he was one of the nominees for 
president of the United States, very well expressed this sentiment of a few 
leading minds in the south. He said ■. 

'* Our slave states, especially the more southern of them, in which the 
number of slaves Is greater, and in which, of course, the sentiment of injus- 
tice is stronger than in the more northern ones, are to be placed on the list of 
decaying communities. To a philosophic observer, they seem to be falling 
back on the scale of civilization. Even at the present point of retrogres- 
sion, the cause of civilization and human improvement would lose nothing 
by their annihilation."— Helper's Impending Crisis, page 214. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 609 

congress imposed any restrictions upon slavery in 
this new state. "Beware of the fate of Caesar and of 
Rome,"^^ and, "we have kindled a iire which all the 
waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood 
only can extinguish."^' At the time of forming the 
federal constitution, they "lamented that some of our 
eastern brethren had, from a lust of gain, embarked 
in this nefarious traffic," the African slave-trade. Then 
it was "essential, in every point of view, that the 
general government should have power to prevent the 
increase of slavery." ^^ But in 1819, when this power 
was sought to be applied in the case of Missouri as a 
restrictive constitutional provision, its advocates were 
charged with "endeavoring to excite civil war," and 
that they personally were "no better than Arbuthnot 
and Ambrister, and deserve no better fate." ^^ 

In 1776, the south held "that all men are created 
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable rights ; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure 
these rights, governments are instituted among men, 



58 Speech of Mr. Scott, of Missouri, in congress, in 1819: "Beware of the 
fate of Rome." Thus at this early day was the political freedom of the people 
and the republic of the United States of America threatened with destruction. 

59 Speech of Mr. Cobb, of Georgia, in the house, at the time Missouri was 
admitted. History of Georgia, page 457. 

60 Speech of Colonel Mason, of Virginia, on provision to inhibit importa- 
tion of slaves. Helper's Impending Crisis, page 208. 

6i Speech of Mr. Colston, of Virginia, in the house, in 1819. 



010 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed." But in 1820, a portion of the people of 
the slave states had no rights, in the opinion of their 
representatives, "and that the proposed amendment, 
prohibiting the further introduction of slavery," they 
held to be "unconstitutional." «2 in 1787, "the old 
congress" passed an ordinance prohibiting slavery in 
the " North- Western Territory," and it was ratified 
"by the new congress at their first session" under the 
constitution; "Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
lina, and Georgia had, by the unanimous vote of their 
delegates, approved that ordinance." ^^ But in 1820, 
"several of" [these same] "slave states passed res- 
olutions declaring that congress had no power to 
prescribe to the people of Missouri the terms and 
conditions upon which they should be admitted into 
the union, and that congress was bound in good faith 
to admit them upon equal terms with the existing 
states,"^* in violation of the ordinance made by the 
old congress, and ratified by the new one, which 
assembled immediately after the adoption of the con- 
stitution. 

Although the morals of South Carolina and Georgia, 
in 1787, had become so abandoned as to endorse and 

63 Speech of Mr. Tallmadge. Blake's Histort of Si^vbbt, page 460. 

63 History of Political Parties, page 396. 

64 Ibid., page 319. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION 511 

struggle for an extension of the slave-trade for twenty 
years, their depravity had not reached so shameless 
a condition as to attempt to justify or support slavery 
upon principles of morality and religion. These states 
then held slaves upon the principle that "might makes 
right." They had not then arrived at that degree of 
turpitude which adds hypocrisy to oppression, but 
boldly avowed that "religion and humanity had 
nothing at all to do with this question. Interest," 
said they, "is the governing principle." ^^ But in 
1820, and thereafter, not only in South Carolina and 
Greorgia, but thoroughout the whole slave states, the 
people endeavored to persuade mankind that they 
were real philanthropists ; that slaveholders were 
doing a genuine service to the blacks ; that it Avas 
a great blessing to these benighted heathens to be so 
tenderly drawn within the pale of Christian influence, 
and their poor darkened souls saved from tlie tor- 
ments which the unredeemed sinner cannot escape. 
It had now become a blessing to the African that 
a place existed where he could be purchased and 
enslaved, for the negroes who were brouglit across 
the ocean were lawful prisoners taken in war, and, 
that had they not been disposed of to the trader, 
made possible by the planters, they, as such prisoners 



6s Speech of Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina In constitutional conven- 
tion of 1787. Blake's TTistory of Slavery, page 396. 



613 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

of war, woiild have been cruelly put to death by 
their sable conquerors, in conformity to the rules 
of negro warfare in Africa. 

Nor did selfishness and dissimulation stop its 
effrontery here. Their arguments soon assumed 
such bearings as tended to justify slavery irrespect- 
ive of color. Although a vindication of the enslave- 
ment of one race is a justification of the servile 
subordination of all races, the southern people had 
never before possessed the temerity to approach and 
thus avow this form of the question. Said they, and 
that, too, in the halls of congress, did not all the states 
of antiquity hold slaves ? Carthage, Syracuse, Greece 
and Rome held them, and were they not illustrious 
nations ? The people of Carthage composed and con- 
stituted a prosperous and powerful republic existing 
many hundred years ; from Greece, continued they, 
mankind received the first impressions of profound 
thought; and what people were more noble than 
those of Rome? And finally, is not slavery a divine 
institution? Does not the Bible sanction it? And to 
support themselves, they said that the Hebrews, after 
the death of Joseph, were given into bondage to the 
Egyptians, so remaining for several centuries, and 
when God saw fit He raised up Moses to lead them 
out of this lowly condition into the promised land, 
as He had foretold to their fathers. Were not these 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 613 

chosen people afterward sent into bondage to the 
inhabitants of Babylon also, at the instance of divine 
wisdom, to punish them for the violation of God's 
commands ? 

These shallow and shameless arguments were also 
uttered in the stage-coach, in the social circle, on the 
stump, in the lecture-room, and in most of the pul- 
pits throughout the south. That there had been some 
change in the moral feelings of the masses in the north 
also, is evident from the facts, first, that they had 
emancipated their slaves, as the tenure being antag- 
onistic to principles of right ;®^ and second, that in 
time after this emancipation, a majority of them 
repeated these southern arguments, respecting a jus- 
tification of slavery, as a final conclusion disposing 
of the whole controversy, and those who attempted 
to write or speak against the inequitable relations 
of the friendless and "down- trodden" slave were 
denounced as "fanatics" and "black abolitionists." 



66 It appears to us about as weak a position as one can possibly assume, 
to suppose that the northern states abolished slavery because it was not 
remunerative in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and the New England 
states. If this were true, why were our ancestors a whole century without 
discovering it? If it paid to have services performed for reward, It ceitainly 
paid better if they were rendered for nothing. At this stage of the case we 
are told that slaves will not perform the same amount of labor in the same 
time that free persons will. But this applies as much to the south as to the 
north. "And northern climate is too cold for the negro ;" yet he thrives here 
as much as the white man, and does as much labor. Our ancestors should 
hare been wise enough, by their long experience, to have discovered this fact. 
This is of more modern origin. The truth is, the minority in the north were 
as reluctant to yield up their slave property as would have been Virginians 
in 1820. 

3 3 



614 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

In the constitutional convention of 1787, Virginia, 
Maryland, North Carolina, and Delaware were deadly 
opposed to the African slave-trade ; and Virginia and 
Maryland soon passed acts permitting emancipation. 
In 1778, the legislature of Virginia prohibited the 
importation of slaves from abroad, or from surround- 
ing states ; and four years later all restrictions upon 
manumission, which had previously existed, were 
removed, abolition being encouraged.^'' The acts of 
Virginia planters under the new regulations fully indi- 
cated that they were not unequal in quality of humane 
feelings to the modest and moral condition of their able 
representatives; for within ten years manumitted slaves 
became so numerous that their number alarmed the 
more iron hearted holder. ^^MsLYyland. followed the 
footsteps of Virginia, both in prohibiting the intro- 
duction of slaves, and in removing the restrictions on 
emancipation." " ^ 

In 1831, by the Southampton insurrection, the 
slave-holders of the south were alarmed for them- 
selves and families. They became awakened to the 
fact, that things were becoming most delicately com- 
plicated; that the family of the isolated planter, 
surrounded as it was by numerous slaves, was liable 
to be slaughtered at any moment before succor could 

67 Blake's History of Slavery, page 389. 

68 Ibid. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 515 

arrive. This threatening attitude of forthcoming 
events moved a few members of the Virginia legisla- 
ture in favor of the emancipation and exportation of 
the colored race from the territory. For safety of 
families, domestic slaves had to be locked out of the 
house of the master ; and it was publicly declared by a 
few in the legislative halls of the state, that to protect 
the lives of the people was the principal reason why 
emancipation should be enforced. The critical state 
of affairs, the worst of which might be anticipated at 
any moment, alarmed the most placid incredulity. 
In the chambers of the state, it was alleged that 
"many a brave man, who would face without shrink- 
ing the terrible array of battle, and with a fearless 
heart spur upon the cannon' s mouth, has felt his blood 
in icy currents flow back upon its source from the 
chilling, the fearful thought, that when he should 
return to the home he had left, he should be greeted, 
not with the smiles of joy and of welcome, but by the 
mangled corses of his butchered family." ® ^ This move- 
ment toward emancipation in the breasts of a paucity 
of individuals, was directed by the element of fear, and 
by very little more. It served, however, to discover the 
feelings of the masses, presenting them to the consid- 
eration of the world. This insurrection served to show 
also that, although the masses were stirred to their 



69 KiSE AND FAI>Ij of THE SjjAVE POWEK IN AMERICA, Vol. 1, page 196. 



616 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

depths at the dangerous relations which they held to 
the colored race, they were little actuated by feelings 
of humanity toward their slaves. Whatever move- 
ment was made toward emancipation, it amounted to 
nothing, for, "looking to ultimate emancipation and 
expatriation, however remote and gradual, it alarmed 
the slaveholding aristocracy which had so long ruled 
Virginia, and which at once took the alarm. Discus- 
sion," [of the abolition of slavery in the legislature, 
which had taken place,] "sternly frowned upon, 
ceased. Most of the men, prominent in this debate," 
[favoring emancipation,] "were either placed under 
the ban of the slave power, or were compelled to pla- 
cate it by succumbing to its behests, disowning their 
own words, and becoming the active agents in defend- 
ing what they once so severely condemned."'"' 

From the moral status which Virginia held in 1787, 
by the just condemnation of slavery as a crime of 
horrid villainy, the masses had become sufficiently 
changed to add sacrilege to hypocrisy and oppression, 
in falsely charging to the Author of Christianity the 
sanction and endorsement of human bondage. During 
this debate upon a prospect of gradual emancipation, 
it was held that slavery was not an evil, and "Mr. 
Burr" [an influential member] "denied the sinfulness 
of slavery ; said there were more than forty millions of 



70 Ilis£ AND Fall ob" the Slave Power in America, vol. 1, page 196. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 617 

slaves at the beginning of the Christian era, and that 
Christ saw them in their wretchedness, and, although 
he came into the world to rebuke sin, he did not 
condemn slaveholding ;" meaning that by His silence 
He acquiesced, countenanced and supported slav- 
ery. ' ^ l^OT was this sacrilegious feeling, that slavery 
is justified upon a religious foundation, confined to 
the south. The pernicious sentiment had penetrated 
the north, finding millions to endorse it, and among 
the thousands to advocate it was the best scholar 
of the age. Edward Everett, whose checkered career 
unfolded the double policy of his life, in con- 
gress alleged that, "the great relation of servitude," 
[the right of agitating the slavery question being in 
discussion,] "in some form or other, with greater or 
less departure from the theoretic equality of man, is 
inseparable from our nature. Domestic slavery is 
not, in my judgment, to be set down as an immoral 
and irreligious relation. It is a condition of life as 
any other to be justified by morality, religion, and 
international law."'^ 

In considering the demoralized condition of a sepa- 
rate people, it would, at first, appear that they could 
fall to no lower grade of depravity than to endorse the 
"highwayman's plea," that "might makes right." 

71 Rise and Fall, of the Slave Power ln America, vol. 1, page 196. 

72 Ibid. 



618 IIISTOEY OF THE DECLENSION. 

But there are far lower states of demoralization to 
which a people can be plunged. South Carolina and 
Georgia, in 1787, as we have seen, justified themselves 
on the right of the stronger; but subsequent to the 
admission of Missouri, their attitude on the slavery 
question indicated that, in the feelings of the people, 
there had been a change for the worse ; and that the 
tendency of their moral faculties, during a period of 
half a century, had been downward, reaching a lower 
parallel. A change had been wrought, but not for the 
better. Instead of a frank avowal of wrong resting 
npon power, acknowledging the right of revolution, 
(the right of the oppressed to become the oppressor,) 
their character had so differentiated as to couple to the 
above the elements of a time-serving and accomplished 
hypocrisy. Other pernicious feelings than those of 
the freebooter had made their appearance in the char- 
acteristics of their inhabitants, and posited themselves 
upon the ruins of justice and of reason. 

The lead of these extreme southern states was fol- 
lowed by all slaveholding portions of the union ; and 
to South Carolina and Gfeorgia, in a small measure, 
are to be attributed the decline of morals in the rest of 
the south. In 1787, when all the rest of the southern 
states desired some plan adopted by wliich manumis- 
sion could be effected. South Carolina and Georgia, if 
slavery were interfered with, if the African slave-trade 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 619 

were estopped by constitutional provisions, would 
withdraw from the old federal compact, not ratify the 
new constitution then in process of formation, and 
hold independent national existence. To cement the 
thirteen nationalities into one, concessions were yielded 
by the northern states, and the fallen principles of 
extreme southrons triumphed over the moral senti- 
ments of eleven larger and far richer states. Although, 
in the constitutional convention, the representatives of 
the rest of the southern slave states felt insulted at 
being forced to associate in convention with Carolina 
and Georgia delegates, who openly professed piratical 
principles, in 1835, the former endorsed the sentiment 
of the latter, when they alleged that slavery "in all its 
bearings was a blessing," being justified by both mor- 
ality and religion. '=5 So rapid had been the decline of 
morals in the four other southern states, that it is to be 
believed that they took the degree of hypocrisy as soon 
South Carolina and Georgia. Those sublime moral 
principles which ruled Virginia in 1787, had become 
practically annulled in 1838 ; and John Quincy Adams 
thought that "it is not an occasional ebullition of 
popular passion and feeling which marks the contrast 



73 Compare the speech of Kr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, in the consti- 
tutional convention of 1787, (Blakb's History of Si-avbrt, page 386,) with 
the speech of Mr. Thompson, from the same state, endorsed by the entire 
southern delegation, in the house of representatives, in 1835, (Rise and Fall 
OF THE Slave Powrit i-f America, vol. 1, page 347.) 



620 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

between tlie sentiments of the fathers and the slave- 
holding doctrines" of their immediate descendants. 
''It is the perversion of intellect, the degradation of 
man to the standard of the brute, which marks the 
American school of servile philosophy." And he 
alleged that were George Washington and Thomas 
Jefferson alive, and "should dare to show their faces, 
and to utter the seK-evident truth of the Declaration 
within the state of South Carolina, they would be 
hanged." *»* 

After the African slave-trade had been formally 
prohibited by the United States, it was secretly carried 
on by the slave-holders of the south. But worse than 
this was the domestic slave-trade, which sprang up in 
the more northern of the southern slave states. The 
horrors of the domestic, it has been averred by those 
who were acquainted with all the features of both, 
were more afflicting to the feelings of compassion than 
those of the African, slave-trade. Those states of the 
south, which once so earnestly desired emancipation, 
considering slavery too heinous an evil to be counte- 
nanced by any "but the uncivilized tribes of central 
Asia," before the admission of Missouri, became the 
great marts from which divided families, in gangs, 
wound their way in anguish to the sugar and cot- 
ton plantations of the gulf states. "Maryland, the 

74 KiSE AND Fall of the Slave Power in America, vol. 1. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 521 

District of Columbia, and Virginia, became tlie seat of 
the disgraceful traffic, the head-quarters and field of 
operations of those who, in the prosecution of their 
terrible business, here sought its victims and fur- 
nished supplies for the southern market. So cruel 
and shameless did the trade become, that many 
masters themselves, and defenders of the system, 
revolted at such demonstrations" of inhumanity, 
"and entered their earnest protests against the log- 
ical sequences of their own theories. John Randolph 
denounced it as inhuman and abominable, and moved 
for a committee of investigation, but nothing ever came 
of it. Even the governor of South Carolina, in a mes- 
sage to his legislature, denounced 'this remorseless 
and merciless traffic, the ceaseless dragging along the 
streets and highways of a crowd of suffering victims to 
minister to insatiable avarice.'"''^ Throughout Ken- 
tucky the domestic slave-trade was stimulated to an 
unusual activity. It is fortunate for historians that 
human feelings cannot be so extinguished from the 
mind as to reduce every individual to the level of 
degenerated brutality. They exist in all ages, coun- 
tries and races, and, by their strong action upon 
individual being, produce vigorous expressions of 
disapprobation at the barbarous cruelties which the 
depraved portion of mankind are prone to commit. 

7S Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. 1, page 99. 



522 HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 

Prom the sad features of the domestic slave-trade these 
outspeaking sentiments of a Presbyterian synod pro- 
nounced the system of American slavery an "iniquity;" 
that in the state of Kentucky "there" was "not a vil- 
lage," it said in complaint, which "does not behold 
the sad procession of manacled victims."''® "Mr. 
Paulding, afterward Mr. Van Buren's secretary of 
the navy, thus describes a party of these northern 
slaves, which he met in 1815, sold for the southern 
market. 'In a cart,' he said, 'tumbled like pigs, were 
half a dozen half -naked children, who seemed to have 
been actually broiled to sleep, followed by scantily 
clothed women, without shoes or stockings, and men, 
bare-headed, half-clad, and chained together with an 
ox-chain,' followed by a white man with pistols in his 
belt. A southern editor wrote of the same kind of 
procession as 'with heavy, galling chains riveted 
upon their persons, half-naked, half-starved,' these 
victims of man's unfeeling rapacity were traveling to 
a region where ' their miserable condition will be sec- 
ond only to the wretched creatures in hell.' " '''' "Nor 
were these rare, extreme, exceptional cases. They 
were the order of the day. The border states had 
become slave-breeding communities, making the rais- 
ing of slaves a special and fostered interest. A 

76 Risk and FAiiii of the Slavb Power, vol. 1, page 99. 

77 Ibid. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 523 

Baltimore journal said: 'Dealing in slaves has 
become a large business ; establishments are made 
in several places in Maryland and Virginia, at 
which they are sold like cattle. These places of 
deposit are strongly built, and well supplied with 
iron thumb- screws and gags, and are ornamented 
with cow-skins, oftentimes bloody.' Mr. Gholson 
said that much of the wealth of the slave-breeding 
states was produced by this traffic. Professor Dew, 
afterward president of William and Mary College, 
in a review of the great debate in the Virginia 
legislature, in 1831-32, on the slavery question, felt 
called upon to answer the objection that this traffic 
would depopulate Virginia of its black population, 
which he did by saying that it added largely to 
its revenues, and thus ' becomes an advantage to the 
state; and does not check the black population as 
much as at first view we might imagine, because it 
furnishes every inducement to the master to attend 
to the negroes, to encourage breeding, and to cause 
the greatest number possible to be raised. * * * 
Virginia is, in fact, a negro-raising state for other 
states.' 

"Now when it is remembered that this was not 
spoken in the heat of debate by a political partisan, 
but written by a cultivated, scholarly man in the calm 
retirement of his study — an educator, too, of young 



524 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

men in the venerable college of his state — discoursing 
of slave-breeding and slave-selling as if they were 
mere matters of political economy, precisely as he 
would write of raising stock and improved breeds of 
cattle, coolly putting the two abhorrent ideas together, 
the one as indecent as the other was inhuman, and 
arguing that the stimulus thus given to slave-breeding 
was an adequate compensation for the losses incurred 
by slave-selling, something of the moral tendency of 
the system he defends and advocates may be esti- 
mated." The historian continues to say that "what 
gives its deepest shading to this dark picture is the 
fact that this increase was secured by a persistent 
ignoring of the family relation, that these slaves were 
born out of wedlock, and were the fruits of a promis- 
cuous concubinage. If this were the style of thought 
and feeling pervading the upper strata of society, the 
sentiments of the lower classes must have been simply 
horrible, and the utter social demoralization which 
the rebellion revealed ceases to be a matter of won- 
der. In the prosecution of this terrible business, by 
the confession of the slave-traders themselves, the 
family tie was disregarded, and infants were taken 
from the mother's arms, while she was sold and 
they retained. And this traffic had become so enor- 
mous, that in 1836 it was estimated that the number 
sold from the single state of Virginia was forty 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION^. 625 

thousand, yielding a return of twenty-four millions 
of dollars." '8 

A people who have arrived at conditions which 
enable them to endure with calmness, and without 
indignation, the sights which American slavery pre- 
sented to the beholder in districts where it existed, 
have descended to degrees of doubly degenerated 
brutality, of which no rational person would desire 
to be possessed, the external and horrible effects of 
which the most transcendent genius must, by the 
limits of human reason, fail to comprehend. So low 
had already fallen the moral faculties in a people 
who once would have rejected with disdain anything 
bearing against principles of equity and compassion ; 
who once would have scorned to be classed by the 
naturalist in the same species with those possessing 
the turpitude to furnish, in and from themselves, 
facts which so strongly tend to establish the proof of 
total depravity in mankind. 

The sovereignty which the moral faculties exercised 
over the feelings of the southern people at the close 
of the American revolution, (1783,) had been usurped 
by the propensities by 1820, the passions of which were 
everywhere exhibited, and to which, with very few 
exceptions, the next generations in the south became 
still farther subdued. 

After the animal faculties had completely triumphed 

78 Risk and Fall or the Slave Power, vol. 1, page 101. 



526 HISTOKY OF THE DECLEITSION. 

over the moral powers in the mentality of the south, 
and the mind of the people left in anarchical ruins, 
the activity of the propensities pointed and deter- 
mined the character of the people. Duels, premedi- 
tated murders, fire- eating fanaticism, licentiousness, 
the sales of sons and daughters of vendors, marked 
the character of both sexes of the white race in the 
southern slave states. Had these elements of the 
nether world confined their influences for evil to 
southern territory, it had been far less detrimental 
in its effects to the welfare of the Great Eepublic. 
But southern statesmen, at the instance of their con- 
stituents, thrust these decayed principles upon the 
north, so that upon old towns, made memorable 
by love of liberty, such as the city of Boston, where 
for more than a century political struggles were main- 
tained against Stuart oppressions, the pugilistic, the 
thug-like principles of the south were imposed. '• 
So much had southern degeneracy been absorbed by 
the high and low, rich and poor, of the free states, 
that it became not only unpopular and disgraceful, 
but extremely dangerous, for persons to favor by pub- 
lic expression, the cause of the persecuted blacks.** 



79 Consult History of Rise anb Fall of Slave Povtbr, vol. 1, pp, 384 and 
385, in which is related the manner in which a meeting was broken up that had 
assembled to give expression of indignation at the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy. 

80 Wherever abolition meetings were held in the north, the mob law 
violence of the south prevailed in them, outraging the persons of men, and 
in some instances those of women, — Ibid., passim. 



HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 627 

The movements of the masses in base subserviency 
to southern qualitieSj is well illustrated by the action 
of the authorities, elected by a majority of the 
voting population, of the city of Boston after the 
murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy. When intelligence of 
it reached this old city "Dr. William Ellery Chan- 
ning and a hundred of its citizens applied for the use 
of Faneuil Hall to give expression to their horror at 
this murder of a Christian clergyman. But their 
application was rejected. This refusal, and especially 
the reason assigned therefor, greatly increased the 
popular indignation and apprehension; affording, as 
it did, but another illustration of the national vassal- 
age and subserviency to the slave power, when even 
the doors of the cradle of liberty were rudely closed 
against those who would mourn over the martyrdom 
of one of its honored and most heroic defenders. 
Men of all parties and sects were greatly excited.'* 
With the fearlessness demanded by the crisis, Dr. 
Channing addressed an appeal to the citizens of 
Boston to reverse this arbitrary action of the city 
government. Avowing that the purpose of the pro- 
posed meeting was to maintain the sacredness of the 
press against all assaults, he declared that to intimate 



8i I think the historian is mistaken in supposing the indignation to have 
been very extensive, as it occurred in 1837, the proportion of abolitionists to 
whigs and democrats, who supported at this period the slave power, being 

very pmali. 



628 HISTORY OF THE DECLENSION. 

that such action did not express the public opinion 
of Boston, and that it would provoke a mob, was to 
'pronounce the severest libel upon the city. Has it 
come to this V he asked. ' Has Boston fallen so low ? 
May not its citizens be trusted to come together to 
express the great principles of liberty for which their 
fathers died % Are our fellow citizens to be murdered 
in the act of defending their property and assuming 
the right ot free discussion? and is it unsafe in this 
metropolis to express abhorrence of the deed ? If such 
be our degredation, we ought to know the awful 
truth ; and those among us who retain a portion of 
the spirit of our ancestors should set themselves 
to work to recover their degenerate posterity.' "^^ 
Therefore, the old city of Boston, at this time, 
was ruled by the principles which predominated in 
the south. If such were the condition of morals in 
Boston, what must have been that of the rest of the 
north ? 

As the elements of north African depravity passed 
from Carthage to Rome two centuries before Christ, in 
like manner, twenty centuries afterward, the same, after 
having decomposed the moral faculties of the southern 
people, were transferred to do the work of death to the 
causes of the moral sentiments in the northern masses. 
Although the southern people manifested growths of 

82 History of Rise and Fall of Slave Power, vol. 1, pages ;3&3 and 884. 



History of the DECLENSioif. 529 

prosperity and power, they were the vigorous pro- 
ductions of those propensities which, on the eve of a 
nation's fall, seldom fail in astonishing us with the 
prodigy of their actions. Such, however, are but the 
"struggles of pride and selfishness," 8^ not those of 
moral principles. And there are facts on whicli man- 
kind fail to take correct distinctions. The progress of 
depravity and of virtue, the apparent of the one, the 
real of the other, are so misunderstood by the entire 
population of the worid, that their predictions of the 
careers of nationalities are sure to result to them in the 
disappointment of their hopes and expectations. 

After these causes of the moral degeneracy of the 
south had completed the ruin which they were adapted 
to effect in that section of the union, their secondary 
forms entered the free states to stifle the activities of 
the causes of compassion and of the sentiments of 
justice in the mentality of their inhabitants. 

It produces sorrowful feelings in an American who 
loves his country, to contrast the noble, the god-like 
condition of the southern mind at the revolutionary 
epoch to that depraved and fallen one which it had 
reached fifty years afterward. That the noble princi- 
ples which axjtuated the inliabitants of these states in 



83 The phrase Is irom one of the fathers of the republic from the South, 
predicting the nature of the military prowess which southern people would 
exhibit If alavery should lonir continue in the territories. 



34 



630 HISTOKY OF THE DECLENSION. 

their resistance to European aggression, should, in 
so short a period, cease to influence their immediate 
descendants in territories where they had existed in 
such potency ; that a people in whom, a locality in 
which, the solemn fortitude of the humane qualities 
was once in such vigorotts proportions as to force to 
revolution all the despotisms of the white races in 
Europe, should be in mortal repose in half a century, 
can justly challenge the world for a contrast of equal 
magnitude. The fathers of the republic from the four 
southern slave states, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia 
and North Carolina, were scarcely in their graves, 
when the piratical principles of the Bourbons, of the 
Hapsburgs, and of the Braganzas, controlled the feel- 
ings and actions of their posterity. 

Although slavery was abolished as a military 
necessity during the "great rebellion," it had pos- 
sessed being among the southern people suflSciently 
long to leave the moral faculties in complete desolation. 
In the six southern revolutionary states, and in the 
south-western ones admitted into the union in time 
afterward, by 1835, republican sentiments had fallen 
and given place to those of anarchy and despotism. 
By that year the republic in the southern half of the 
United States had become a nullity, its formal existence 
being dragged along till 1861, by the elements of free- 
dom existing in the non-slaTeholding states of the 



HISTORY OP THE DECLENSION. 531 

north. Although the people in this one portion of 
the territory of the United States could render no 
support to the republican sentiments of the nation, 
for lack of republican qualities, it was only a prostra- 
tion of about one-third of the vital power of freedom 
in the great confederation. 



END OP VOLUME I 



Ja'33 



